


The Shenanigans of Lily Potter

by greisful



Series: Lily Luna Potter: Muggle Enthusiast [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fluff, Humor, Humour, Mild Profanity, Next Generation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7003105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greisful/pseuds/greisful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>Lily Potter was Hogwarts muggle nut extraordinaire, just like her grandpa Arthur. And as much as she knew about muggles, she was a hazard to them surrounded by any of their devices or them themselves. Welcome to a life full of sticky situation (and that can be taken literally at times).</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maniac

Her family said it all started when she was very little, her housemates said it started when she could take Muggle Studies as one of her subjects. Lily didn't really know when it all started and she didn't care, she liked muggle things and that was that.  
  
Her Grandpa Arthur was thrilled to find someone else who was as fascinated by muggles as he was. He finally had someone who he could talk to that would understand his thoughts and be able to come up with theories with him. If asked who had a bigger obsession, people would never be able to give an answer because Lily and Arthur were pretty much tied for the worlds biggest obsession with muggles.  
  
Her friends couldn't understand why Lily was fascinated with people that could do so little compared to wizards. Being the true friends that they were, however, they didn't question it and let Lily be and go on with whatever she was doing. Just because they put up with the muggle obsession didn't mean that they were going to get sucked into any of Lily's plans, oh no, they left that spot for Rose. For some reason she always seemed to be the one getting sucked into all of Lily's crazy ideas.  
  
No matter where Rose was or what she was doing, one way or another Lily would drag her into her plans and they'd more often than not, things would end up exploding and sending the two of them flying through the air. Sounds fun, right?  
  
Harry Potter denied any request that his daughter made for anything muggle related. It was common knowledge that if you gave Lily anything that was bought from a muggle store she would never leave her room for the next five years or so because she was tinkering with whatever she had. She'd break apart the object and once it was broken, attempt to put it back together.  
  
Lily was no technician or mechanic or anything like that, and she certainly didn't know how anything in the muggle world worked so more often than not, she just broke her stuff.  
  
If anyone asked though, any pieces found in her room that belonged to something that was once a device or you were not there because of Lily.  
  
That being said, Lily had somehow gotten her father to buy her a laptop. I would say no one knew how she convinced him but everyone knows that Lily was daddy's little girl and Harry would do anything for his daughter. When she'd gotten it, Lily had shut herself up in her room for three months and didn't leave because she was "surfing the web." She had quickly adopted the language of all muggle teenagers and their response to being asked what they were doing.  
  
Everyone had eventually learned what had happened on Halloween in fifth year, and they all learned what had happened with the motorcycle during the summer after fifth year, no doubt Lily would go back to school with people making bad jokes about her driving skills. It would seem logical then that Lily would not be left unsupervised for the rest of the summer or around any vehicles whatsoever. Naturally, this meant that Lily was now sitting behind the wheel of a ministry car with her father next to her teaching her how to drive and Rose sitting in the back praying for her life.  
  
And when Harry told Lily to light press on the gas pedal, Lily heard step on the gas and drive like a maniac. Harry was cursing himself for giving in to Lily's puppy dog eyes while Rose said the words to her prayer even faster.  
  
Hey, I said it would be logical to keep Lily away from vehicles and supervised at all times, I never said that that actually happened. In the Potter household, there was no such thing as logic.


	2. Monkeying Around

The car went careening down the street, Lily was the only one who was even remotely happy about the current situation, and Rose and Harry were in different stages of mortal terror. Lily seemed to have no idea how to use the steering wheel properly so she just kept turning it left and right. She had no idea that that was what was causing the car to turn.  
  
The scar swerved to the right and then it swerved to the left, throwing its occupants from side and making the seatbelts strain in an effort to keep them in their seats. Rose had never been so thankful for something made by muggles before in her entire life.  
  
Lily was humming to herself while driving at breakneck speed and Rose was the only one who realized that there was a turn coming up. She grabbed hold of the edges of the front seats, pulled herself forward as much as the seatbelt would allow and screamed, “LILY, TURN!” at the top of her lungs.  
  
Lily finally tuned in to what was happening and turned the steering wheel to left. The car tires screeched loudly, everyone in the car immediately clapped their hands to their ears. And when I say everyone, I do mean everyone.  
  
“LILY, HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!” Rose shrieked hysterically. The car was about to crash into a store but thankfully Harry dove for the steering wheel and straightened everything out in time. Lily took her hands away from her ears and stared as her dad leaned over her seat and steered them towards an empty car park.  
  
They drove around in circles for about a minute because it never occurred to Lily to take her foot off of the gas pedal and Harry was too busy trying to keep everyone in the car alive and said car from driving out of the car park and crashing into a store or a house.  It finally occurred to Rose that she should use her wand to stop the car seeing as her cousin wasn’t going to be taking her foot off of the gas pedal anytime soon.  
  
Rose unbuckled herself and dug around her pockets looking for her wand; it was a few minutes before she finally managed to get it out of her small back pocket. She pointed it at the front of the car because it was the closest she could get to the engine and said, “ _Subsisto!”_  
  
The car immediately stopped, causing all of its occupants to be thrown forward against their seatbelts, and in Rose’s case, hit the stereo with their face. Rose groaned and slowly sat up. She rubbed her face to make the pain go away and to make sure that she could actually feel her face.  
  
“Thanks Rose,” Harry and Lily said at the same time.  
  
“Anytime,” she replied, wincing as she pressed on a tender spot near her temple. Her face was going to bruise horribly, it always did. “Lily, why didn’t you hit the brakes?!”  
  
“You can do that!?” Lily exclaimed in surprise. Rose stared back at her in shock while Harry groaned and muttered something about how he should’ve mentioned the brakes to Lily first.  
  
“Wait, so you’re telling me that you got into a car without knowing what any of the stuff in it did?” Rose asked her cousin slowly. Lily bit her lip and nodded sheepishly, her face beginning to turn a bright red.  
  
“I know what the pedals that make the car move forward do,” Lily said in a small voice.  
  
“After that experience, anyone would know what those did,” Rose said rolling her eyes, she turned her attention to her uncle who was rubbing the bridge of his nose, “and you let her drive without teaching her all of this!?”  
  
“I know Rose,” her uncle replied sighing.  
  
“You shouldn’t have even taken the car keys out of your pocket!” Rose cried.  
  
“I had fun, let’s do that again,” Lily said chirpily, she was bouncing in her seat. Her dad and Rose turned to look at her with incredulous looks on their faces. Lily snapped out of the daydream that she was having about driving the car again and noticed the expression on her father and cousin’s face.  
  
“What?” she asked defensively. Rose didn’t say anything; she simply dove for the keys of the car, pulled them out from the ignition and handed them to her Uncle Harry who quickly put away the keys. Lily looked disappointed at the fact that she wouldn’t get to drive again.  
  
“Can you at least drive us back to the house?” Lily asked her dad hopefully.  
  
“Actually Lily, how about you and I go for a bit of a walk together, okay?” Rose said, opening the car door and stepping outside. Lily sighed but she didn’t argue. She would learn to drive a car on another day and next time she wouldn’t mess it up. Once Lily had gotten out of the car, Harry moved over into the driver’s seat and shut the door. Lily and Rose waved goodbye to him as he started up the car and drove out of the empty car park.  
  
The two cousins slowly made their way back home, avoiding the owner of whose store they had almost crashed into –he still managed to throw them a dirty look as they were passing.  
  
The street was quiet, most of the adults were at work and any children were most likely visiting friends. Everyone knew about the Potter’s and Weasley’s and what they got up to during the day. There was always a chance of something exploding or something falling out of a window. The parents didn’t like to leave their children around during the day and so arranged for them to be somewhere until they were done at work.  
  
Rose and Lily walked by shops and a few quiet houses in silence before Lily broke it with a question for Rose.  
  
“I forgot to ask you this, did you get a job?” Lily asked her cousin. Rose had been looking for a job for several months and she had the qualifications to get any job that she desired but she just hadn’t found anything that she would really want to do. Lily was hoping that maybe she’d finally settled down on something but she knew that the chances weren’t very big.  
  
“Erm, actually I have,” Rose replied looking anywhere but at Lily. She’d been hoping that her cousin wouldn’t ask her that question. Lily couldn’t help but be surprised; she’d expected a no and then an explanation about why this job and that one didn’t work for her. Her cousin looked awfully uncomfortable about the subject though.  
  
“And what’s the job?” Lily pressed, completely ignoring how uncomfortable Rose looked. She wasn’t always the best at picking up on signs that people didn’t want to talk about a certain topic. Rose was usually the one to point out that she should drop a subject and move on to something else. Unfortunately, Rose was the one being questioned and there was no one else to help out Lily.  
  
Then again, there were times when Lily could tell that people didn’t want to talk about a topic and just chose to ignore it.  
  
“Erm, it’s a job informing people about the muggle world,” Rose said staring at the sidewalk. It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the entire truth either.  
  
“Oh that’s great, when do you start?” Lily asked, the excitement evident in her voice. Rose smiled at her little cousin, Lily may have been crazy and very reckless but she always wanted the best for her family. In fact, she wanted the best for just about anyone and when she got excited every time something good happened to those that she knew, she was genuinely excited.  
  
“In a couple of days,” Rose responded, stopping to press her face against the window of a pastry shop. She looked down at the delicious cupcakes longingly; unfortunately she hadn’t brought any money with her to buy any of them. They were practically calling to her though, just begging to be bought.  
  
Lily saw that her cousin wanted nothing more than to walk into that shop and buy every delicious-looking pastry there so she grabbed her by the arm and dragged her off before Rose started creating a puddle of drool on the street. It was a good thing that she did too, that shop owner didn’t look to pleased to have someone fogging up their window and making it dirty.  
  
“So tell me Lily, why exactly did you get behind the wheel of a car when you know nothing about it?” Rose asked her cousin, clasping her hands together behind her back.  
  
“I wanted to drive and you wouldn’t let me if I told you that I didn’t know any of the thingamabobs on the car,” Lily replied, turning a light shade of pink.  
  
“Considering the fact that we almost died, you can understand why I would do that,” Rose shot back. Lily began to turn even redder and avoided Rose’s gaze.  
  
“It’s not like it’s the worst thing that I’ve done,” Lily finally said after thinking about a response for a minute. Lily and Rose turned a corner and came onto their street. The Potter household was at the very end of the street at the next intersection. They began the walk uphill slowly, walking by white house after white house. Each of the houses had a green and trimmed lawn, the Potter household was a large dark brown house with dead grass. There were some small green patches here and there but for the most part, it was brown or black because of the places where it had caught fire.  
  
The backyard wasn’t that different from the front yard, the grass was pretty much dead and now there was a tree in the back that had pieces of metal stuck to it that no one could get out. It would forever be a reminder that Lily had completely and utterly destroyed James’ motorcycle. He still hadn’t forgiven her for that even though Lily had promised to pay back her brother for the damage one day.  
  
“True, very true,” Rose replied, pointing a finger at Lily as she ducked under a tree branch. There were times when it really sucked being taller than everyone else in the family. “There was that time when you brought home a monkey and set it loose on the house. Aunt Ginny was so furious with you for setting the kitchen on fire, I’ve got no idea how you survived that. I thought she was going to murder you for sure.”  
  
“We all agreed that monkey seemed perfectly well trained at the time,” Lily said as she tripped and almost landed on her face. If she’d known that the monkey wasn’t trained then Lily wouldn’t have brought it home, it’s not like she thought it would be a brilliant idea to let an untrained monkey loose on her house.  
  
Rose rolled her eyes at her cousin and pushed open the metal gate of the Potter household. Lily followed behind her and closed the gate before running to catch up with Rose. Rose may have been shorter than Lily but she walked at a fast pace and took long strides, sometimes it was Lily who had to keep up with Rose instead of the other way around. The ministry car was nowhere to be seen so Lily assumed that it had been taken back to the ministry before she could do anymore harm to it or endanger someone else’s life.  
  
Lily opened the door to her home and stepped inside, moving out of the way so that Rose could come inside as well. The two cousins hung up their jackets and made their way into the kitchen where they found Albus drinking orange juice with his feet up on the counter. The moment that Rose and Lily entered the kitchen his feet left the table and he was slumped over as he usually was. Once he realized that it wasn’t his mum in the doorway, Albus relaxed back into his previous position and turned his attention to his cousins.  
  
“I see you’re both alive,” he said grinning, “Lily must’ve known what she was doing.”  
  
“No, she didn’t but I did,” replied Rose. She walked over to the fridge and buried her face in it looking for food. She passed the coconut cream pie that she found to Lily and continued to look. Lily made her way over to the table with the pie in one hand and three plates in the other. Albus hurried to help his sister and made sure that she didn’t drop any of the pie on the floor.  
  
He really didn’t want another birthday cake incident like the one when Lily turned thirteen. All of that good and delicious cake and Lily had tripped and dropped the entire thing face down on the pavement.  
  
Lily spread out the three plates and got three forks and spoons out while Albus went and got a knife. Rose had stuck her head in the freezer and was trying to choose between chocolate flavoured ice cream, vanilla and caramel. They were all excellent choices and Rose was having difficulty picking out which one she wanted to eat the most at the moment. In the end, she simply shrugged and brought out all three tubs of ice-cream. It’s not like anyone was complaining anyway, it was ice-cream after all.  
  
Albus cut up large pieces of pie and served a piece to his sister and cousin while Lily helped Rose scoop ice-cream into bowls. The three of them sat down and began to eat.  
  
“Anything else happen on your way back?” Albus asked through a mouthful of pie. He’d only started eating and there was already some on his chin, his nose and a spot of cream close to his ear. Lily sighed, got up and started to look around for a roll of paper towels. She banged around the kitchen for a minute and then finally found what she was looking for. She ripped off a sheet of paper towel and handed it to Albus so that he could wipe his mouth.  
  
“Here,” Lily said handing her brother the paper towel.  
  
“Thanks,” Albus replied and started to wipe his entire face. It was easier to wipe his entire face than ask for the places that he was dirty, more often than not he would miss the dirty spots by a mile and Lily would end up having to clean him up as usual.  
  
“Yeah, we talked about things that Lily’s done that were worse than almost getting us killed,” Rose replied as she picked up the knife and cut herself another generous slice of coconut cream pie. It was best to finish the pie now before Lily’s Uncle Ron got his hands on it. As it was, most of the pie was already missing and it seemed that Uncle Ron had probably eaten most of the pie anyway.  
  
“Like that time when she had that monkey and it set the kitchen on fire,” Albus said, smiling as the memory came back to him. Lily glared at him and aimed a kick at his legs. The last thing that she really wanted at the moment was to relive her past disasters. Unfortunately for Lily, her past disasters were a form of entertainment and a topic to talk about when there was nothing else for conversation.  
  
Lily dropped her fork on the table, quickly swallowed her pie and said, “Oi, I thought we all agreed that the monkey seemed perfectly trained.”  
  
“I never thought that, I just said that to fit in with all of you guys,” Rose replied. She wiped her hands clean just to make sure that she’d gotten rid of any pie that may have gotten on her and put away the empty cardboard platter that still had small pieces of pie on it.  
  
“Thanks a lot guys, some relatives I have,” Lily muttered as she finished off the last of her pie and put down her fork. She collected the empty dirty plates and put them in the sink where they immediately began to wash themselves.  
  
“Anyone up for a game of Exploding Snap?” Lily asked her brother and cousin. They thought about their answer before agreeing to a friendly game of Exploding Snap, they had nothing better to do, this seemed as fun of a game as any.  
  
Rose, Lily and Albus left the kitchen and made their way to the backyard to play Exploding Snap. Lily ran upstairs to get her deck of cards and ran to the patio where she found Rose and Albus seated around an empty table and ready to place.  
  
Lily grabbed a chair and sat down. She began to shuffle the cards and once she was satisfied that they were mixed up enough, she split the deck into three smaller ones and handed one to Rose and one to Albus. Albus started out first, since he was the last one to get his deck, and put one card down flat on the table with the number and suit facing upwards. Rose and Lily added on a card at the same time. They carefully leaned the cards towards each other and after making sure that they weren’t, going to fall, let Albus go again.  
  
They continued on like this for a few minutes, adding cards on as the structure made out of playing cards got bigger and bigger. The three of them were totally focused on what they were doing and making sure that everything didn’t explode.  
  
“Lily, were we even allowed to eat that pie?” Rose asked suddenly. She never took her eyes off of the task at hand and her concentration never wavered.  
  
“I’m pretty sure we were,” Lily replied as she furrowed her eyebrows and stuck her tongue out to the side. She was standing on her chair and trying to add another card to the top of building made out of cards.  
  
“And if we weren’t?” Rose asked as Albus took his turn and added another card to the bottom.  
  
“We’ll just say Uncle Ron came over and ate it,” Lily answered.  
  
And so the game continued on in silence. It was slowly approaching evening and none of the cards had exploded at all, they had been unusually silent the entire game. Lily, Rose and Albus were all on their guard near the beginning of the game because they were sure that something was going to happen but after nearly an hour of the game still going, they were starting to relax.  
  
Lily was vaguely aware of someone opening the front door of the house and entering but she was too focused to care about who it was. There was the sound of feet walking towards what she assumed was the direction of the kitchen and the sound of a fridge opening.  
  
Lily was moving so slowly to put her card down, she had to lean it as gently as possible otherwise it might set off the entire deck. She was just about to put down the card when she heard,  
  
“Lily Potter, what happened to that coconut cream pie?!”  
  
Her mum slammed the door of the refrigerator shut and Lily was so startled that she dropped the card in surprise and almost fell out of her chair. The card fell as if in slow motion, Lily watched in horror as it slowly fell and landed on the deck, it was a split second of total silence and the card structure quivering and then the entire deck of cards that had been put together so carefully, exploded all over the backyard. 


	3. The New Muggle Studies Professor

Rose wasn’t one to keep secrets from Lily, partly because Lily got irritating to the point that you told her whatever she wanted to hear to get her to shut up, and partly because the two of them were so close that it just seemed unnatural not to share everything with her. Throughout the years, there wasn’t much that Rose had kept hidden from Lily, but that summer was the exception.

As a child, Rose had never really considered teaching to be her calling, she’d always assumed that she would end up working for the Ministry of Magic. Rose was brilliant and she knew it, it made perfect sense to her that she would end up working in the Ministry or some other high paying job. But then during the summer after being forced to explain countless items to both Lily and her Grandpa Arthur, it hit Rose that she loved seeing the look of wonder and delight on the face of her magical relatives at discovering the workings of the simplest of things. It was only by lucky chance, when her parents had Hagrid over for dinner, that Rose learned that the Muggle Studies teacher had resigned and the position was open.

When asked later by Lily when she had sent an Owl to McGonagall applying for the position, Rose would say that she couldn't even remember actually sending the Owl, it had been a spontaneous decision. She hadn't had much hope in receiving a positive answer but to Rose’s delight and surprise, McGonagall had agreed.

But not too much surprise, after all, the magical community had pretty much no standards when it came to educators.

No one, besides Rose’s parents were allowed to know about Rose’s new occupation. Hermione and Ron were resistant to Lily’s probing in a way that no one else in the family was, and as such, were the only ones that could be trusted to keep their mouths shut.

The only thing that was left would be explaining why she wouldn't be on the platform seeing Lily off. Rose thought about it for a while and she could disappear early in the morning claiming to have an errand to run, or act really sick, and make it seem as if she couldn't get out of bed to see Lily off.

But upon thinking it over further, if Rose claimed to be sick, Lily would just insist on busting her way into Rose’s room and talking to her herself. Running errands would be Rose’s only option, maybe she’d leave a note for Lily saying she’d try and stop by before the train left.

The night before Lily was to head off to Hogwarts. When Rose stopped by to drop off a bowl for her Aunt Ginny, she found Lily sitting in the kitchen with a pad and a pen. Her pen tapped furiously against the pad of paper in front of her while she stared off vacantly into space. 

“Lily, what are you doing?” Rose asked, placing the bowl on the nearest counter she could find. Lily jolted back to reality and turned to her cousin with a wide grin.

“Oh just making a list of things I want to bring up when I meet my friends. That and a bunch of muggle related things I want to look into,” Lily added, flipping through the pages of her pad that Rose noticed were full of Lily’s loopy scrawl.

“Really, is there anywhere on that list a reminder for you to pack your things?” Rose asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No it does not, thank you for reminding me dear cousin of mine,” Lily said, pointing with her pen before dashing off up the stairs to pack her things. 

While Lily was upstairs, Rose picked up the pad of paper and looked through the list Lily had drawn up. She only paid attention to the muggle related items on it, she figured in addition to the curriculum she might teach her classes something extra that would be found interesting.

After looking through the list though, Rose wasn't sure how much of it she could cover without people losing interest. Lily took a decidedly more scientific interest in the muggle world than most people. She had been ready to take apart an entire car in order to try and figure out how it worked. Thankfully Lily had settled for simply learning how to drive one instead. The same could not be said for James’s motorcycle, which was still in the repair shop after Lily had taken it apart.

But most people didn't really take as much of an interest in the scientific aspect of the muggle world. As Rose remembered it, barely any Hogwarts students moved up to take NEWT level Potions  _ or _ Arithmancy, she doubted they would care about atoms and electrons. Rose found that most people didn't really care about  _ how _ muggle contraptions worked, they only cared about how to  _ work _ them. 

Rose put the notepad when her Aunt Ginny walked into the kitchen, a bunch of flowers in one hand and her laptop in the other. Ginny’s laptop was the only muggle thing that any of the family owned that Lily  _ hadn’t _ gotten her hands on, all thanks to the fact that no one wanted to make Ginny angry.

“Hey there Rose,” Ginny greeted her with a grin as she put her laptop down on the kitchen counter. Ginny walked over to one of the kitchen cupboards and grabbed a glass for the flowers still in her hand. “What brings you over here?”

“Mum told me to drop off a bowl for you, and I reminded Lily that she has to actually pack for school this time.” Just as Rose finished, a loud bang came from overhead where Lily’s room was followed by quite a bit of swearing and some more banging. 

“You’d think she was packing the bathroom sink with her,” Rose added with a shake of her head.

“Right, wouldn't want to have to send all of her things via owl again,” Ginny said with a grin as she filled her glass full of flowers with water. “You want anything to eat?”

“Actually I can't stay, I have to get an early start tomorrow, I have some things I need to do,” Rose said with a sigh.

“I have bakllava.”

“Thirty minutes and then I really have to go.”

* * *

 

Rose woke up early the next morning, she’d spent the night waking up every few hours and checking the time. The nerves that she didn't know she had started to creep in every time she woke up throughout the night. 

She would miss the train, or she would run into Lily on the train, or she could get into the same carriage as Lily, or parents would snitch on her, or she would forget her trunk. Even worse, what if none of the students liked her, or respected her? Being their friend was quite different from being their teacher after all. What if people found her class boring, or Rose couldn’t teach and left everyone feeling confused? What if she ended up being solely responsible for destroying everyone’s desire to learn?

The moment her thoughts gave her any peace and then she had to get up and get dressed to head to the station.

Her trunk was left next to her door with all of her additional bags. And while Rose was worrying, in Lily’s house, Lily was being spied on.

Lily had tried to pack in various muggle contraptions throughout the night unsuccessfully. First she had tried to take a toaster, and then the microwave, and then a camera, an electric toothbrush, a digital alarm clock and anything else that needed to be plugged in or require electricity. James, Albus, Harry, and Ginny had all stopped by her room, picked the object out of her trunk and went on their merry way. She wouldn't have put it beyond them to be keeping guard outside her door in case she got up in the middle of the night.

When Lily was ready to leave the next morning, she was subjected to Ginny’s muggle detector, a spell Ginny had invented to root out muggle inventions. Lily had been subjected to this ever since she had started Hogwarts. It began when she had taken her neighbours car keys because they'd fascinated her and her constant pressing of the buttons had kept setting off the alarm of the car it belonged to off every few seconds.

She stopped by Rose’s house before she left to say goodbye to her favourite cousin, and to collect Hugo, but after searching the house from top to bottom, she came up empty. That being said, she may not have found Rose, but she sure did find Rose’s phone. Lily reasoned that it was perfectly okay for her to take Rose’s very muggle, very electric, very likely to explode around magic object, and slipped it into her back pocket so she could give it to Rose when she saw her on the platform.

“Where's Rose?” Lily asked, bursting into the kitchen where her Uncle Ron sat drinking a glass of orange juice.

“She left early, said she had some errands to run,” Ron replied with a smile.

“So she won't be there to see me off?” Lily pouted.

“Oh don't worry, I think she’ll be there to see you off,” Ron said with a look that gave Lily the impression he was hiding something.

“Well if you're sure Uncle Ron, I'll see you at Christmas,” Lily gave Ron a kiss on the cheek before bounding for the front door. “Hugo for Dumbledore’s sake will you hurry up, Nana Molly moves faster than your fat arse!”

* * *

 

While Lily was running around preparing to get ready on the train, Rose had been awake by seven in the morning and ready to go at seven thirty. She'd sat around for another two hours fidgeting in nervousness and then left after giving her mum and dad goodbye hugs. Rose considered herself very lucky that she didn't have to do anything on the way to Hogwarts, for once she was grateful for the Prefects. All she would have to do is hide away in a professor’s compartment until they got to Hogwarts and then somehow manage to get on a carriage that did not have Lily in it.

Unable to say goodbye to the rest of the family, Rose was seated in her compartment near the front of the train reading a book to waste away the time.

Unlike Rose, Lily was dealing with the usual family chaos that came with the departure for Hogwarts. Everything had to be triple checked because no one wanted to send an owl. Once they got onto the actual platform, the other cousins had to be hunted down and then everyone's belongings had to be triple checked  _ again _ . Dominique and Louis were, as always, bickering at the tops of their lungs, Victoire, as always, had her phone out and was filming it. Teddy’s hair colour was constantly changing in excitement even though he wasn't going back to Hogwarts. 

Molly and Fred were still half asleep, and Hugo wouldn't stop complaining that Lily was being mean to him. James was absent, he’d thrown something at the door when Lily tried to say goodbye, and Albus was at work already. Lily kept looking around for Rose to show up at some point, but Rose was nowhere to be found. And with Rose nowhere to be found, that meant that Lily couldn’t give her back her phone, so obviously the only logical explanation would be for Lily to take it with her to Hogwarts and then send an owl directly to Rose.

After she’d meddled with the phone and broken it apart into pieces of course.

In the time that it took to find everyone, there were only minutes left before the Hogwart’s Express left the station, goodbyes were thrown around, hugs and kisses were passed from cousin to cousin to aunt to uncle and then before Lily knew it, she was on train, waving out of the window at her family until they were out of sight.

Her cousins had disappeared to find their own friends, and Lily herself went about looking through compartment after compartment to find hers. Lily eventually found who she was looking for, after having to drag her trunk through the entire length of the train, she found her friends, Delilah and William sitting in a compart near the front of the train, playing with muggle cards.

“Oh what a shame that you couldn’t pick a compartment that was even farther away,” Lily said with an exhausted huff.

“How difficult it must’ve been for you to actually walk for longer than five minutes,” Delilah replied without looking up from her game. Lily stuck out her tongue and then wrestled her trunk into the overhead. Once she’d managed to get it to sit still without toppling out and onto her head, Lily plopped down in her seat with a huff, her hair sticking to her face.

“What are you guys playing?” Lily asked looking down at their game. There were four piles of cards in between Delilah and William, two of them were in the middle and quite thick, and the two on the edges had almost no cards in them, Delilah and William held the rest.

“Our good friend William here has learned of a game called Speed, and I’m absolutely destroying him at it,” Delilah said as she slammed down her last card triumphantly and yelled “SUCK IT!” into William’s face.

"How is it possible for you to be better than me at literally everything?" William asked in shock. "You just learned this game, how are you already better than me?"   
  
"Don't be so shocked Will dear, you're trash at everything," Delilah replied with a grin and a patronizing slap to Will's cheek. "It doesn't take much to be better than you."   
  
Lily was too busy choking on her own spit to defend William.   
  
"Lilah you've moved so far up your own ass you've reached your duodenum," Will grumbled as he flipped her off.   
  
“Don’t be silly Will, if that were the case Delilah would only have such an acidic attitude when she had diarrhea,” Lily piped in with a grin.

“She must have constant diarrhea then,” Will replied.   
  
"I am shocked at this attack on my character," Delilah said in mock outrage. "Tell us Lily, what did you set on fire throughout the summer? Who did you send to the hospital?"   
  
"Don't be absurd, at most I caused property damage," Lily scoffed. Delilah shuffled the cards a few times before dealing them out three separate ways so the trio could play Egyptian Rat Screw.   
  
In the brief silence that ensued as everyone picked up the cards that Delilah had finished dealing out, Lily could've sworn that she heard the muffled voice of Rose ordering Chocolate Frogs. A moment later the sound was gone and Lily shook her head in bewilderment, she must've been missing Rose a lot more than she thought.   
  
"I learned how to drive a car!" Lily exclaimed as everyone started slapping down cards from their pile.   
  
"What's that—William I slapped those Queens first,"Delilah said narrowing her eyes at Will.   
  
"No you didn't."   
  
"Then why is my hand underneath yours stupid?" Delilah widened her eyes. Will cursed under his breath before letting her take the pile of cards the Queens were on.   
  
"They're kind of like broomsticks except they don't fly, and they have rubber wheels to move on, they're usually big enclosed boxes with windows, and an engine that makes it move forward," Lily explained as she put down a Jack and then waited for Delilah to put down her card. Lily scooped up the deck once Delilah had put down a number card.   
  
"Sounds complicated," Will responded distractedly.   
  
"Oh it is, incredibly so, people spend years learning how to build them and what makes them move, but they're very easy to operate," Lily said enthusiastically, her mind already running with ideas and theories on how the entire machine worked. "Easy for anyone who isn't me obviously."   
  
"Naturally," Will snorted.

“Did you hear—Lilah you only put down two cards, you need one more,” Lily added pointing at the pile of cards in between the three friends.

“Hear what?” Delilah asked as she put down another card.

“Apparently we’re getting a new Muggle Studies professor this year,” Lily said.

“How’d you find out?” Will asked. A second later he slammed his hand down on top of two four’s with a triumphant yell.

“Hagrid and McGonagall came to visit, and Hagrid has a habit of telling people things that he shouldn't,” Lily added with a grin.

“What happened to the one we had?” Will asked with furrowed brows.

“I don't remember, I think they said something about working with the Ministry of Magic in Muggle Affairs,” Lily replied with a shrug. “I wonder who the new professor is gonna be.”

They passed the rest of the ride similarly, sharing what had happened over their summer, taking wild guesses at who the new professor was going to be—with each guess becoming wilder and wilder and their giggles becomes louder and louder. Eventually the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station and the three of them joined the throng of students heading towards the carriages.

Lily tried to look over everyone's head to see how many people were ahead of her and saw someone who looked exactly like Rose from the back, even the shade of the hair colour was the same. Or at least could've sworn that she did because the moment she blinked, the bright red hair had disappeared. Maybe she was feeling guilty for having taken Rose’s phone with her, there was no other explanation for why she was seeing Rose everywhere.

_Unless_ _…_

Lily shook her had at the silly idea, no way would Rose want to be a professor at Hogwarts.

The entire carriage ride to Hogwarts, and up until they were seated, Delilah had not stopped talking about her trip to Canada. She remembered so many details Lily would've bet money that her friend had written everything down to make sure she wouldn't forget.

The Great Hall, as always, was filled with students, all of whom were yelling at the top of their lungs in an attempt to be heard over one another. Lily looked up at the staff table to see who would be sitting in the old Muggle Studies professor’s seat, but it was empty. Unable to help herself, Lily continued to glance at the staff table every few minutes as if that would make the new professor appear faster. 

_ Hope they don't mind me taking over their class every once in a while,  _ Lily thought with a shrug. She knew it was irritating but she just couldn't help herself, she just got so excited during class.

There was still no sign of the new teacher when the first years were brought in for sorting.

* * *

 

Rose snuck into the Great Hall as the last first year was walking to their house table to loud cheers and clapping. Nobody looked to see who was entering from a side door at the staff table but Rose kept her head down anyways as she hurried to her empty seat. She managed to slide in just as McGonagall silenced everyone in order to make her announcement.

“As I'm sure at least some of you have heard, our Muggle Studies professor, a Ms Kilburn, resigned over the summer in order to take up a position at the Ministry of Magic. I'm sure you will miss her and will wish her the best in her new position.” McGonagall paused as the entire hall broke out into whispers discussing the news. She waited for everyone to settle down before continuing.

“That being said, please welcome Ms Kilburn’s replacement, someone I'm sure many of you are familiar with, Professor Weasley,” McGonagall said, turning to Rose with a warm smile. Rose stood up with a sheepish grin, her face turning a light pink, and raised a hand in hello as students clapped, whooped, hollered, and wolf-whistled.

In the mass of students, Rose made eye contact with Lily who looked shocked beyond words. Before the commotion in the Hall could die down, Lily stood up, hands planted on her hips, and yelled out above the din of noise,

“ROSE WEASLEY I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD KEEP SOMETHING THIS BIG FROM ME,” Lily yelled with a glare at Rose. The entire Hall went quiet within seconds of Lily yelling. Rose cast a glance at McGonagall in the hopes of receiving help, but McGonagall looked entirely too amused to put a stop to anything.

Rose grimaced, her previous professor had chosen the worst moment to develop a sense of humour.

Before Rose could reply, smoke started coming out of one of the pockets of Lily’s robes. Lily, distracted by the steady stream of smoke, refrained from yelling at Rose and instead shoved her hand into her pocket to pull out the object that was emitting the smoke.

Rose immediately recognized the object in Lily’s hand. “Lily is that my—”

With a few sparks and shudders, Roses phone gave a mild explosion that let loose black smoke to pour out of the now cracked screen. 

“Phone,” Rose finished after the phone had stopped short circuiting.

“You know what, let's just call it even,” Lily said, shoving Rose’s phone back in her pocket.

“I'm owling Aunt Ginny.”

“Aw come on Rose isn't it good enough that I feel bad,” Lily whined.

  
“One small lie does  _ not  _ equal a thousand pound phone sweaty, sit down.”


	4. The Grappling Hook

Reading was a hobby that all parents encouraged their children to partake in. This was a lot harder to do with magical children who grew bored of muggle novels because they could accomplish everything the characters in the novels could through magic. On top of that, there weren't that many magical authors and novels to keep kids interested.

Obviously this did not apply to Lily.

Lily loved reading muggle novels, she couldn't get enough of them no matter what genre they fell under. And, as was usual for Lily, she took them as more of a manual instead of hobby. Oh she wasn't about to go off on hair brained adventures thinking she was a spy or anything like that. 

But she would build a grappling hook and risk serious injury testing it out to see if it worked. 

Which was exactly what Lily set out to do after she finished reading one of her novels. It was all she could think about throughout her classes, she couldn't even pay attention in Rose’s class and it was her favourite. 

Lily had checked out every book in the library related to muggles, grappling hooks, and how to build things. Rose’s phone was busted no matter how hard Lily tried to fix it, and with nothing else to give her access to the Internet, Lily found herself limited to whatever the library had on hand. She briefly considered checking the Restricted Section but then thought better of it, grappling hooks didn't exactly fall under the category of dangerous or illicit.

Unless you managed to take someone's eye out with it or something.

Lily was extremely grateful to her roommates for the possessions that they didn't know they'd given her to transfigure into metal. Lily would've preferred to build an authentic, completely muggle working grappling hook, but she wasn't above using some magic if that didn't work out.

Lily had pored over the books and surmised based on the diagrams she saw and the mathematical equations that she only partially understood, that it would be fairly easy to build a grappling hook.

In theory.

Building the various parts was easy, putting them together…not so much. Lily put everything together very loosely so to speak, she was planning on running a couple of tests in order to figure out what needed to work. She picked up the hook part of her grappling hook, attached a rope to the end of it and flung it around her room to see what it would catch on.

Nothing was the answer.

It didn’t catch onto the end of her mattress, or the handle of her dorm room door, or the edge of Lily’s desk or the wardrobe that was in the room. There was the small chance that it might have been because Lily was a terrible thrower, but with tips that sharp, it was bound to catch on something.

So Lily fixed the hooks by curving them even more. Once that was done, she ran the same test again. Lily’s adjustment worked a little too well.

The grappling hook broke right through her door, much to her amazement, except when Lily tried to pull the hook back, it got stuck. No matter how much Lily pulled on the darned thing, it just would not budge out from the door. Lily had to plant both feet on either side of the door frame and pull with all of her might to get the hook to even budge a little bit. Just as Lily was about to pull the hook out, one of her dorm mates practically kicked open the door, sending Lily flying onto the floor, and the grappling hook crashing into her desk, leaving a hole.

“What...are you doing?” Cinder, one of her room mates asked her.

“My grappling hook got stuck and I was about to remove it before you charged in here,” Lily responded from her spot on the floor.

“Did it never occur to you to use magic?” Cinder asked with a raised eyebrow as she stepped over LIly’s sprawled form on the floor and headed for her bed on the other side of the room.

“My wand is in here somewhere, I don’t know, I lost it somewhere in the pile of work I haven’t done, and besides, the amount of precise, careful wandwork it would take to carefully remove the hook without destroying the whole door would infuriate me,” Lily said. She climbed to her feet and approached her small wooden desk and looked through the giant hole that her grappling hook had made. The object in question lay on the floor innocently, as if it wasn’t slowly destroying all of the furniture in the room.

“You do you hun but if you break any of my things I will find you,” Cinder said as she grabbed whatever she had come looking for and left before Lily could accidentally inflict any injury on her. Lily spent another hour adjusting the hooks again until they finally worked properly. With one problem out of the way, she moved onto her next test.

Only Lily couldn’t get to a proper test because she didn’t have a proper handle that would attach to the rope, that would be attached to the end of the grappling hook. It was too small for her hand, and as such, was too small for the grappling hook as well. Lily frowned down at her hand, where the handle sat and her finger was too big to fit into the hole for the trigger and the handle was too small for Lily to consider it secure in her hand. She predicted that with the force that shooting the grappling hook would exert, at the current size of the handle, it would probably be yanked out of her hand.

It was not a pleasant thought to think about, especially when Lily pictured herself on the side of a building and then suddenly falling to her death because the entire grappling hook had been yanked out of her hand.

She enlarged the handle and considered the problem solved.

Except it wasn’t.

The hook ended up being heavier than the handle and instead of sitting secure in the barrel, kept falling out onto the floor. Lily put her hands into her hair and tugged at her roots. She was going to scream. She was already so behind on homework and with every day that passed, her pile of work grew ever higher. It sat next to her bed and haunted her constantly.

Lily took a quick bathroom break and then dove right back into her work. She sat around flipping through textbooks trying to figure out how to make the handle heavier without starting from scratch. After thoroughly reading through and looking at one diagram, Lily threw aside her book with a sigh.

“I’m-no, I’m not doing this, I am too tired for this, where’s my wand,” she muttered to herself and started looking through her messy part of the room trying to find it.

After fiddling around for a few minutes trying to find a good ratio, Lily finally managed to solve her problem and crossed her fingers that the thing would work properly now. Lily put her finger into the loop and had barely brushed her finger past the trigger when the grappling hook was discharged and her hand jerked back from the force of it.

Slowly, little by little, Lily increased the amount of pressure that would be needed to release the grappling hook without causing an accident. Her wand accidentally slipped at one point but Lily ignored it when it happened, she doubted the wand had done much damage and put it down to test out the trigger once more.

On the second run through though, no matter how hard Lily pulled, the grappling hook would not release from where it was sitting. Lily looked down at her pink, mildly throbbing hands, fairly certain that she had almost pulled a muscle just trying to pull the trigger. With a sigh, and blowing hair out of her face, she picked up her wand again and went back to tinkering.

After some more trial and error she finally figured out how to get the trigger just right and let a sigh of relief.

And once all of those were fixed, Lily faced another problem of course: the rope.  Taking into account the weight of the grappling hook and the handle, the rope it was tied to was much too thin to be able to handle much stress on it without snapping.

This last detail was too much for Lily, when she discovered the flaw, she threw herself onto her bed with a grunt of frustration and sent the large pile of homework sitting next to her bed flying around the room. She was so behind on all of her work, her roommates had taken up temporary residency somewhere else for fear of getting clobbered over the head with a flying grappling hook. Will and Delilah had run out of excuses for why Lily wasn’t paying attention in class and now Lily had a bunch of detentions waiting for her over the next few weeks.

Even Rose had gotten tired of it, she’d pulled Lily aside after one class and told her to work on her projects outside of her class and to pay attention.

Ignoring the pile of work by her bed, as she’d been doing for the past week, Lily got up, tied up her hair and decided to hell with the muggle method. She picked up her wand and started casting spells, the rope became stronger, whatever faults were left that Lily had missed, because she hadn’t checked for them, were gone (at least as far as Lily could tell).

Once Lily was satisfied with it, she positioned herself in front of her dorm door to prepare for one final test. She aimed the grappling hook and then pulled the trigger. She was forced to take a step back from the force that was released when the hook was discharged from where it sat. The grappling hook punched right through Lily’s bedroom door, sending wood splinters in every direction, and emitting a loud shriek of panic in the process.

Lily frowned in confusion, she hadn’t remembered putting some sort of alarm on the grappling hook, where was the shriek coming from? While the handle on her hand started to pull the rope back in until the grappling hook got stuck, Lily squinted through the giant hole in her door and saw the face of an extremely frightened second year.

“Sorry, I didn’t hit you, did I?” Lily asked nonchalantly. The second year shook her head quickly before running off, wood chips falling out of her hair as she went.

Lily shrugged and turned back to her work, with a slight tug, the grappling hook released from the door and rewound itself back into the hole on Lily’s handle. Lily picked up her wand, pointed it at her destroyed dorm door and said, “ _Reparo._  

Once the door was fixed again, Lily took up her position the same as before and aimed her grappling hook at her door. She pulled the trigger and watched the grappling hook shoot forward and punch through door as before. She grinned, tugged and watched it rewind back into her barrel.

She repeated this same thing a dozen more times before feeling confident that her grappling hook was working properly. Now that her project was done, Lily could finally tackle her homework. She put down her grappling hook and picked up the first thing on the top of her pile.

Lily grinned when she saw it was her Arithmancy homework that was due tomorrow, if her memory served right. Lily dug out all of her Arithmancy homework, gathered it in her arms and headed down to the Gryffindor common room humming. Everyone looked up when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“You can go up the stairs now, I’ve finished tinkering,” Lily said and exited the common room to a loud sigh of relief from everyone present.

Lily skipped all the way down to the kitchens thinking about the equations she was about to solve and struggle over, her excitement clear in every bounce of her step. When she got into the kitchens the elves surrounded her in excitement.

“Are you here to work on your Arithmancy Mistress Lily?” one of them squeaked.

“Yes, can I get some hot chocolate please?” Lily asked as she carefully stepped around the small house elves and found an empty table that wasn’t occupied with pans and food.

“Yes miss, right away miss,” the house-elf squeaked and disappeared.

Lily sat down at a table and carefully laid out her things, she’d saved her notes for last and complete whatever textbook questions had been assigned first. By the time her hot chocolate arrived, Lily was already focused and in deep with her work. It took Lily only thirty minutes before she was done all of her assigned questions, and with a disappointed sigh, she pushed them aside and pulled her textbook towards her so that she could make notes.

Lily skimmed the pages quickly, her eyes having become quite adept on landing on the information that was important for her. Her cup of hot chocolate emptied and then was refilled over and over again as Lily spent another hour and a half making notes from her textbook. Every few minutes her eyes blurred with tears as she yawned, either from exhaustion or because her textbook was so incredibly boring it was putting her to sleep.

The thought that she had to do this with another six or so classes made Lily want to cry.

Eventually Lily did finish though, she packed up her things, thanked the house-elvess for taking care of her and headed back up to Gryffindor Tower to work on the rest of her things. Her Defense Against the Dark Arts essay took pretty much no time to complete, as was usually the case. Everything that was discussed and taught in class, Lily had already talked to her dad about it. Harry loved Defense, and while Lily wasn’t as passionate about it as her dad, she was very good at the subject and the two of them often got carried away discussing theory and spells and wandwork and what would work best in what situation.

Lily looked at her finished essay proudly, she had gone a bit past what her professor had asked for in terms of length, but it was thorough and in-depth, and frankly, a work of art if she was being honest with herself. Her dreaded notes for Defense took less than half an hour as Lily already knew everything there was to know on the topic.

Her only work for Transfiguration was a few readings and Lily finished with those fairly quickly. Lily passed over her work for Herbology and Potions, those subjects were due in a day or two and instead settled on Muggle Studies.

Rose was discussing Britain’s muggle history with the class as her first unit. Not that muggle history wasn’t discussed when Professor Binns talked about wizarding history, but it was more of a backdrop, almost like an afterthought. Rose went in depth, discussing politics of the time, societal expectations of men and women, science, and medicine. Lily was absolutely fascinated by how ass backwards everyone used to be and wanted to discuss it with Rose.

Her grappling hook had however taken up all of her time so she hadn’t gotten the chance.

While Lily was staring down at her Muggle Studies textbook, a brilliant idea suddenly hit her. She could go and talk to Rose _now_. As a bonus, she would finally get to put her grappling hook to actual use to see if it really worked. Lily grabbed her hook from under her bed, how it had gotten there she wasn’t entirely sure.

She walked over to Cinder’s side of the room and took her broom. Cinder would probably be mildly irritated that Lily had taken it again without asking, but it wasn’t as if Cinder had Quidditch practice to go to right there and then.

Lily opened her window, grappling hook and wand in one hand, her other gripping onto the broom and flew out of the girls tower. Lily wasn’t entirely sure where Rose would be staying throughout the year but she figured if she flew around for a bit she would eventually find the correct window.

* * *

 

Rose had settled in nicely at Hogwarts, none of the things that she had been afraid of happening had actually happened. Her students respected her, even though some of them she had been friends with during her own time at school. People actually asked questions throughout her class and started discussions on what was being taught. And Rose appreciated the fact that Lily was managing to control herself and her enthusiasm in her classes.

She wasn’t entirely sure if that was because Lily was actually exerting self-control or because she was distracted by some side project, nonetheless it was nice that her classes hadn’t been hijacked yet.

Rose’s favourite time of day however still remained the time when she could finally sit in bed and read something with a hot cup of tea next to her. And that was exactly what Rose was doing. She was laying in bed, her pillow propped up so she could lay her head against it instead of the hard wood of her headboard, her blankets were bundled up around her with her book opened in front of her.

She was so engrossed in what she was reading that it took her a moment to realise that there was something strange going on right outside her window. Every few seconds, a large something would go swinging by on what appeared to be a rope and landing a loud thump to her window as it went by.

Rose furrowed her brow, grabbed her wand and approached her window. She pulled back the curtains and waited for whatever it was to appear again. The image of her dear cousin Lily flashed before her before disappearing again. Rose blinked rapidly, sure that she hadn’t seen properly and waited again for another glimpse.

But it was still Lily.

She was almost ashamed of herself for being surprised, who else would it be if not Lily? Her cousin was the only one who would consider scaling the side of a castle as a night time hobby.

Rose pushed open her window and stuck her head out, Lily moving farther away from her on her left.

“LILY! WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING?” she bellowed as Lily stopped moving left and started moving back towards Rose. Rose pulled her head back into her room as Lily swung by again. There was an incoherent sound as Lily attempted to answer before disappearing again. Rose stuck her head back out of the window, turning to the right this time.

“What?!” she yelled again and then pulled her head back in to avoid getting hit by Lily as she swung back again. Except instead of swinging past Rose again, Lily somehow managed to maneuver herself so that she flew right through the window and into Rose’s room, sending Rose sprawling onto the floor as she did so.

“I said, I came to see you,” Lily replied breathlessly, her hair tangled and windblown and her eyes shining.

“You realise you could’ve come like a _normal person_ through the door right?” Rose asked, getting up with a groan. She heard a whirring sound and then a clang as Lily stood before her, proudly holding up a grappling hook.

“Where on earth did you manage to get your hands on a grappling hook?” Rose asked incredulously. Lily handed it to her cousin so that Rose could look it over.

“I made it,” Lily stated proudly.

“You made a grappling hook?”

“Yes.”

“From what?” Rose asked with a raised eyebrow as she looked up briefly at her cousin before turning her attention to the grappling hook in her hand.

“I transfigured a couple of things here and there and put it together,” Lily answered with an innocent shrug.

“Transfigured what exactly?” Rose asked with narrowed eyes. It was one thing if Lily had transfigured her own things, it was quite another if she had taken school property and meddled with it.

“Oh I just borrowed a few of my dorm mates things,” Lily replied with an innocent smile. Rose snorted, borrowed her foot, she’d probably be able to hear the yelling from Lily’s dorm all the way from her room once her room mates found out what she had done with their things.

“And you just decided that you wanted to swing into my room, in the middle of the night, on a grappling hook?”

“Did you not see me come through the window?” Lily asked.

“Lily, what if it didn’t work and you had dropped to your death? Do you know how much trouble I would’ve been in?!” Rose exclaimed.

“Oh don’t be such a worry wart, I tested it out before tonight, it works just fine, besides, I had a broom waiting for me in case something did happen,” Lily said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She plopped onto Rose’s bed, picked up Rose’s book and flipped through it for a few seconds before dog earring a page and throwing it on the bed.

“Lily what did you want to talk about so urgently that you had to grappling hook your way into my room?” Rose asked, trying not to think about the fact that one of her books had just been dog eared.

“Oh, you remember how in class we were talking about Britain’s muggle history?” Lily asked, her face lighting up.

“Yeah, what about it?” Rose asked perplexedly, her hands planted on her hips as she stood in the middle of her room.

“That Mary Tudor was one wild broad,” Lily went on, swinging her legs back and forth from her spot on Rose’s bed. Rose gave a loud sigh and looked up at the ceiling, wondering why she was the one stuck with Lily of all people on that night.

“Lily, go back to your dorm and go to sleep,” Rose said. She marched over to her cousin, grabbed her by her left biceps and marched her to the door of her room.

“Oh come on please, she was so interesting,” Lily whined.

“I get that, I really do, but it is also eleven in the evening, I would like to go to sleep, and more importantly it’s past curfew, come back tomorrow, during the day, and we’ll discuss it then,” Rose said, pinching Lily’s cheeks. Lily pouted and widened her eyes.

“Lily that stopped working after the age of nine, now it just looks creepy,” Rose deadpanned.

“Fine,” Lily sighed and reached for her grappling hook that Rose was still holding onto. Rose pulled it back however and shook her head.

“Oh no, I’m keeping this from now on, knowing you, you’ll probably find the nearest window and start swinging around giving everyone a heart attack when they see you banging around outside their window,” Rose said.

“You suck,” Lily huffed and then turned around and marched off.

“And I’ll make sure to return your roommates broom!” Rose hollered after her. Lily simply waved her off with one hand.

“AND I LOOK FORWARD TO READING YOUR ESSAY ON MARY TUDOR!” Lily’s only response to that was to flip her cousin off before turning the corner and disappearing.

“TRY NOT TO GET CAUGHT BY ANOTHER TEACHER ON YOUR WAY BACK TO THE COMMON ROOM!” Rose added although she wasn’t sure if Lily had heard her.

Rose closed the door to her room and looked down at the grappling hook that she was still holding. She shook her head and grinned, only Lily would think about going grappling hook at night.


	5. The Sports Unit Part 1

Most magical children found muggle sports to be incredibly boring to watch, and you couldn’t blame them when they had Quidditch to grow up with their entire life. Watching someone pass around a football was not as entertaining as watching someone purposefully dive to the ground from a couple of hundred metres in the sky.

If Rose was going to teach the sports unit for her Muggle Studies class, she was going to make the students actually play the games just to give them a taste of how hard it was to move on the ground. And of course, she had to give them some sort of incentive to put in a real effort.

On the day that Rose stood in front of her class to make the announcements, she held the results for the exams of their last unit in her hands ready to hand out.

“I’ve finished marking your exams on the unit on Britain’s muggle history,” Rose said, the pile of parchment sitting next to her and her hands folded on her lap. There was a collective groan around the class at Rose’s announcement. She flicked her wand and sent the pieces of parchment fluttering around the room to their respective owners.

“Some of you did exceptionally well, some of you did okay, and a few of you have to invest a little more time studying for this class,” Rose went on as everyone looked over their marks, some students frowning, others grinning in pride, and some sighing in relief at finding out that they hadn’t done as badly as they had originally thought. 

“Now, would anyone, other than Lily,” Rose added as she saw her cousin’s hand waving frantically in the air, “like to announce what we will be studying next in this class?

No one except for Lily had bothered to look ahead in their textbooks.

“Alright Lily, what are we going to be studying next?” Rose asked with a sigh after a moment of silence.

“Muggle sports!” Lily shouted excitedly, bouncing up and down in her seat, both arms stuck in the air.

“Right you are!” Rose said and with a wave of her wand, the chalk sitting on the chalkboard behind her picked itself up and started writing out the outline of what Rose would be discussing for the topic.

_1\. Rules and regulations for the sports chosen to be studied._

“Like Quidditch, every sport has its own rules and regulations, what constitutes as a foul, a warning, and what will get you kicked off the team. You need to know at least the basic rules of the sport in order to be able to play it, the referee will take care of the rest,” Rose said looking around at everyone.

_2\. Some terminology._

“You need to know at least some of the terminology, not all of it as I’m sure at least ninety-nine percent of you will probably not play these sports outside of this class,” Rose added with a smile.

“What kind of terminology?” one of Rose’s students, Jeremy asked.

“Well, for example, if somebody says you were dribbling, you need to know what that is. You don’t need to know what, say, the MVP is as we will not be getting that in depth with what we’re covering,” Rose explained. She gave her wand a tap and the chalk that had stopped writing momentarily went to work again. The attention of everyone in the class moved to the blackboard behind Rose.

_3\. Learn how to be a mediocre player at each sport discussed._

Point number three seemed to grab everyone’s attention and the class turned to stare at Rose with wide eyes.

“That’s right, you’re all going to be playing each of the sports that I have chosen to cover for the class, otherwise what would be the point of learning the rules and terminology,” Rose said with a grin. Reactions among her students were mixed, some were excited, others looked a bit nervous, a few showed irritation at having to play muggle sports and some didn’t really seem to care at all.

“What counts as mediocre, Professor?” Jeremy asked with his hand raised in the air.

“That is up to each individual to decide, all I’m looking is for some improvement between when you first play the game to your performance at the end of the unit. Not everyone is skilled with the physical coordination needed to be good at these sports,” Rose answered with a nod.

“I realise that not everyone here is gifted at Quidditch, so please don’t be worried that you’re going to be awful at these sports, you may surprise yourself. On the flip side, if you’re good at Quidditch, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re immediately going to excel at muggle sports, they require a different ability than that of flying a broom,” Rose went on. She got up from her desk and began to walk around the room.

Lily raised her hand in the air and waited for Rose to call on her, shooting Jeremy a smug look as she did so.

“Yes, Lily?” Rose asked as she walked around the back of the class.

“What sports will be doing?” Lily asked to several nods of agreements from her fellow peers around her.

“Thank you, I almost forgot to mention that important tidbit,” Rose replied. “Football, rugby, hockey, basketball, tennis, rowing, swimming -I’m assuming everyone here knows how to swim?” Rose asked looking around at everyone expectantly as she finished one turn around the room. All of the students present nodded.

“Excellent, as I was saying, swimming, track, lacrosse, and baseball. If we manage to get through all of those and we still have time at the end, I will consider skiing,” Rose said as she counted off the sports on her hand. The class had broken out into whispers again as Rose paused in what she was going to say. Some students had even brought their books out of their bags to look up the sports that Rose had mentioned, although not all of them were mentioned.

Rose waited until everyone had quieted down and turned their attention back to her before continuing.

“Oh, and I almost forgot, rock climbing as well, and you can thank Lily for the inspiration for that one,” Rose said nodding her head towards her cousin. Everyone turned to look at Lily, there were more than quite a few glares. “Unfortunately, I had to pass over some of the more interesting sports such as bobsledding, figure skating, speed skating, diving, and gymnastics due to your lack of experience in these areas and for your safety.”

“Miss, what exactly is bobsledding?” a petite girl at the back of the class asked, her raised hand almost impossible to see because of the tall boy sitting in front of the girl.

“Bobsledding requires a group of four people, to push a sled of sorts onto a track made of ice, those four teammates then have to get into the sled at the right time so that the sled will continue to move at the fastest speed possible. The sled can move up to one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour,” Rose went on, she was met with more than one blank look from several of the students around her. 

“That’s fast enough to kill you should something go wrong,” Rose added to truly make her point. “As another example, figure skating and speedskating require a bit more skill than simply the ability to stay upright on skates.”

“Any other questions?” Rose looked around, her palms facing outwards in front of her.

“What’s the catch?” one boy in front of her to her right asked, eyes narrowed. Rose grinned down at his suspicious expression, everyone knew her too well.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Rose replied. She walked around her desk and stood behind her chair.

“Whoever earns the most points from their individual and team sports, will get an automatic Outstanding for this portion of the class and will not have to write the unit final,” Rose announced with a grin. Everyone around her burst into whoops and hollers, banging on their desks and whistling in approval. 

Rose let the noise go on for a couple of minutes before holding up her hands to quiet everyone down. She flicked her wand at the blackboard behind her one more time and the chalk went back to work once more.

_4\. Sport competitions and fan culture._

“Now, I know this sounds incredibly boring to some of you, but an important reason to understand why so many of these sports are so popular among muggles and how they manage to stay relevant, even if many people find them tedious to watch, as well as how fan culture is influenced _and_  influences these sports,” Rose went on. She could already see one or two people rolling their eyes and even more students that had lost complete interest in what she had said.

“How can fans of the sport influence it?” Kai, the same boy who had asked what the catch was asked. “Don’t they just watch it and support their favourites?”

“Yes, but they also get incredibly invested, much in the same way that Quidditch fans are. In Canada in 2011, fans in Vancouver, British Columbia, took to rioting in the streets because their home team, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in hockey. They trashed cars and broke store windows, things were set on fire, it was, in short, a mess,” Rose explained.

Rose was about to ask everyone to take out some parchment to begin taking notes when she remembered one final important piece of information.

“And I hope you won’t mind, but these sports will require some out of class investment if we are to get through all of them,” Rose added. The groans and moans and complaints that were already pouring forth were not surprising for her. And Rose wished she could have done it any other way because she knew how much work everyone had to do and how much time it took but she was hoping that everyone would have enough fun that it would be okay.

“Or we could do this without all the sports and you can all sit in here and listen to me drone on and on?” Rose asked instead which shut everyone up. “Please prepare some parchment, we will be starting point number one, our first sport is football, and I don’t mean American football folks.”

Rose flicked her wand and the already floating piece of chalk got to work on drawing a football on the blackboard at the front of the class and then stopped, waiting for Rose to begin speaking so it could continue to dictate notes on the board.

“Football is played with your feet, not your hands,” Rose said wiggling her fingers for effect, the chalk notated what she said on the board behind her. “The only person who is allowed to touch the ball, is the goalie and even they cannot go across a certain line without it being called a foul.”

“Why would you play with your feet and not your hands?” Kai asked Rose.

Rose stopped to think about it and was surprised to find out that she didn’t actually know the answer to why, the only reasoning that she could come up with would be that it would be too easy and extremely similar to rugby.

“I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure, but if I find out, I’ll let you know. But back to my point, football is played with your feet not your hands, so don’t touch the ball with your hands.

“What happens if the ball is coming right at our heads?” someone yelled out while Rose’s back was turned.

“Then I suggest you get out of the way or hit it with your head,” Rose replied. “You can hit the football with pretty much anything except your hands and your arms.”

* * *

 

Lily wasn’t entirely sure that everyone in her class had ever come together to help each other out like her Muggle Studies class was currently doing. Rose had gone through all of the rules and regulations of each sport that they would all be participating in, as well as explanations of how they would all be played.

That was a lot of information to take in and have somewhat memorized by the time their next class came around and they all started their little tournament. 

Everyone had gathered at the very back of the library, their pieces of parchment strewn across the table as they all struggled to remember the rules and what would get them benched and how many points you got when you made shots from certain spots or at certain times.

Lily, to nobody’s surprise, was the only one who was even close to knowing all of the rules and regulations. As such, she was stuck with the task of explaining things to everyone else and correcting anyone who was wrong.

“Rugby is played…” Kai trailed off, his nose scrunching up and his brow furrowing in concentration as he struggled to remember the answer before his face cleared and he finished with, “your hands?”

“Yes,” Lily confirmed with a nod of her head as she looked down at her own notes to double check. “But you can also kick occasionally.”

“When’s the occasion?” Kai asked frowning, shoving one hand in his hair and looking down at his chicken scratch.

“I’m...not entirely sure to be honest but we’ll find out eventually,” Lily replied. She snatched his notes from him and tapped her wand against the sheet, the writing on the page immediately began to tidy itself up, the printing becoming slowly more and more legible. “And honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t find the answer in this chicken scratch.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” another girl whose name Lily couldn’t remember said, waving her hand around to catch someone’s attention. “Hockey is played on skates?”

“Yes,” Lily and Kai replied in unison.

“And people often get into fights while playing this game?” she went on, her eyebrows rising with her question.

“Uh, yes, often times in professional games they do,” Lily replied.

“They get into brawls....on skates?” the girl went, holding her hand up, fingers splayed in the sign for stop.

“I guess so?” Lily replied shrugging her arms.

“That doesn’t sound very safe.”

“Don’t worry Ver, _we’re_  not going to be getting into fights, unless you decide to start swinging at us when we play,” Jeremy replied as he stepped out from behind one of the library bookshelves. Lily scowled up at him and kept scowling as he slammed down his books and pulled back a chair to join the already large group.

“What are you doing here?” Lily demanded rudely, crossing her arms.

“Well everyone in our Muggle Studies class is banding together to learn all these rules and stuff...and I’m part of the Muggle Studies class so I thought I’d join in,” Jeremy replied, raising an eyebrow as if to challenge Lily.

“Joy.”

“Be nice,” Kai whispered in Lily’s ear. Lily stuck her tongue at him in response.

“I can be plenty nice,” she grumbled back childishly.

“Really, because you look like you want to grappling hook your way out of here right now,” Kai said as he tilted his head in question.

“I said I’d be nice, I didn’t say I had to enjoy the fact that he was here,” Lily spat. Kai sighed, rolled his eyes and got to his feet, he flashed a smile at everyone around them and grabbed Lily by the arm.

“If you’ll excuse us everyone, Lily and I are going to take a nice leisurely walk, we’ll be back,” Kai said as he hauled Lily to her feet and started to march her towards the library exit.

“I look forward to when you come back Lily, I’d hate to think you’re leaving because I showed up,” Jeremy said with an innocent smile. Lily tried to lunge at him but Kai had a strong grip on her arm and simply pulled her away.

“You’re not gonna beat me again Jeremy, I’m coming in ahead of you this time,” Lily whisper shouted at him. Jeremy simply wiggled his fingers in farewell.

“Where are we going, I barely even know you,” Lily said as she ripped her arm out of Kai’s grip. Kai flashed the librarian a charming smile as the two of them passed her on the way out. “And don’t manhandle me that is extremely rude.”

“First of all, it’s not as if you were going to come willingly, and second of all, this makes it a great time for us to get to know each other, why don’t you tell me about your problem with Jeremy?” Kai asked, hands clasped behind his back as he and Lily strolled through the corridors.

“He got a higher mark than me in Muggle Studies last year,” Lily mumbled, suddenly aware of how childish she sounded.

“And?” Kai prodded, eyebrows raised as he waited for more explanation.

“And what?”

“I’m sorry I assumed there was more to that, I didn’t realise doing better than you in Muggle Studies made him enemy number one,” Kai responded drily.

“No, it wasn’t just that, it was that he was so smug about it and kept rubbing it in my face, and continues to rub it in my face, it’s so irritating,” Lily growled, clenching her fists.

“Go on,” Kai encouraged her. The two of them had made it down to the kitchens without even realising where they were going, it was as if their feet knew that food was needed in order for them to feel better. Or, at the very least, to get Lily to stop acting like a child.

“He acts like just because he did better than me _one_  time, that suddenly he’s an expert on everything muggle and he uses it to completely disregard anything and everything that I say regarding the subject,” Lily complained.

“Give me an example,” Kai said as he tickled the pair and watched the portrait of fruit swing forward.

“Okay, well, I was telling someone that the remote control for a telly is what causes the channels to change, because it does, and he interrupts and says well actually the batteries put into the remote give it the energy it needs to change the channels on the television which is plugged in which allows it work,” Lily said, pausing to take in a deep breath before continuing. “And it’s like, okay, I get it, we all know what the batteries do but I didn’t feel the need to mention it because it wasn’t all that relevant.”

“Sounds like a right arse,” Kai said in agreement.

“Yes, I know that, hence my animosity towards him,” Lily replied through pursed lips. She picked up one of the butterscotch tarts that had been placed in front of her on a tray by one of the house-elves.

When Lily and Kai eventually made their way back to the library, they found Jeremy lamenting at the top of his lungs about how useless baseball was and how it sounded like some stupid game played with Beater’s bats. Kai and Lily shared a look with each other before taking their seats. Now that Lily had filled herself with food, she found herself much more tolerant of all the garbage she was forced to listen to as it came out of Jeremy’s mouth.

If Merlin was listening, Lily was hoping he would grant her the wish of beating Jeremy in the rankings.

* * *

 

Lily’s muggle class spent every class they had, and the times that they had to meet outside of class, learning how to pass a ball with their feet, putting the rules of the game that they had memorized to good use and playing a few practice games with each other.

It was embarrassing to put it simply.

Fouls were called every few minutes because at least one person couldn’t restrain themselves from not touching the football with their hands. Lily kept aiming head shots at Jeremy’s head despite the fact that he was not the goalie. Kai seemed to have a stroke every time any obstacle crossed his path while the ball was in his possession. And Jeremy, on top of being used as target practice by Lily, only made actual contact with the football one out of ten times. His foot seemed averse to kicking the ball at the right moment, his legs refused to come together so that the ball wouldn’t roll right through them.

And Rose’s shrill whistle had to go off every few minutes to correct one mistake after another. Eventually, everyone got the hang of running with the ball and kicking it in the correct direction with their foot. It was decent enough that no one left the Quidditch Pitch with the urge to gouge out their eyes so they’d never have to witness themselves playing again.

Which was just as well, because something that had started as simply as a class project had quickly turned into a spectacle. Of course the rest of Hogwarts had caught wind of what the Muggle Studies sixth year class was doing. The people in the class had talked to their friends about it and things had caught on through word of mouth.

It was no longer going to be just Rose who would witness their game, if everyone was lucky, only a couple dozen of their peers would show up at the Quidditch Pitch on the day of the actual match to watch them.

The day that the football match was meant to take place was one Saturday evening, and thankfully the weather was pleasantly warm with a light breeze blowing through the grounds. Rose had transformed the ground into a football pitch with nets and bleachers for whoever wanted to sit around and watch her students.

Public humiliation was always great for building character and confidence.

Rose’s class had split into two teams, Lily and Jeremy ended up on the same team much to Lily’s chagrin. Everyone had transfigured the colours on their shirts to their team colours to help identify teammates and stood on opposite sides of the field trying to come up with a game plan.

No one was dressed appropriately, there were no cleats, no shin guards, nothing. Everyone had shown up wearing whatever shorts they could find, with varying sock lengths and in their sneakers.

No one asked where Rose got the football that they would all be using, which was just as well because she thought some of them might faint if they found out she’d transfigured the Quaffle used during the school’s Quidditch games.

And there was the rather large crowd of students making their way from the castle down to the field to watch how the game would play out.

Lily’s team was huddled together, their arms around each other as they tried to give each other a pep talk for the game.

“Destroy them, crush their spirits, play dirty if you have to but we are _going_  to win this stupid game. I want to absolutely _annihilate_  them,” Lily growled, clenching her right hand into a fist in front of her, her other wrapped around the shoulder of a fellow teammate. Everyone else around stared at her in silence when she finished her little speech.

“Lily, you realize we’re all trash at this game, right?” Jeremy asked her with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, how about this, let’s be less trash than the other team then?” Lily compromised. Everyone look at each other before shrugging their shoulders and murmuring their agreement. 

Everyone jogged onto the team and spread out into the respective positions they were supposed to play. Rose was waiting at the halfway line in the middle of the pitch with a whistle hanging around her neck. In the spirit of the game she had put on a black and white striped shirt to mark herself as the referee, the stripes were running horizontally instead of vertically but the effort was there.

Lily had been appointed captain after beating Jeremy at a game of rock, paper, scissors and headed over to Rose, Kai was joining her from the other side of the field. Rose held out a muggle coin in her hand for both Lily and Kai to see.

“Coin toss, heads or tails?” Rose asked them. 

“Heads,” Kai replied.

“Tails, I guess,” Lily said.

Rose flipped the coin in the air, caught it, and then placed the coin on the back of her head. Lily and Kai leaned over to see who had won.

“Kai, you win the coin toss, do you know what this means?” Rose asked him.  Kai gave a start in panic, his eyes shifting frantically to Lily as he tried to remember what the coin toss meant.

“You didn’t plan this far ahead did you?” Lily asked drily.

“No, I didn’t,” Kai responded before closing his eyes in concentration. “If my team wins the coin toss then I...can either choose to start with the ball or...which goal my team would like to score on?”

“Correct,” Rose said and waited.

“Um, we’ll attack the net on Lily’s side of the field,” Kai replied scratching his head.

“Guess, my team will start with the ball then,” Lily said kicking the football over to her side of the field.

Lily jogged over to her team to relay the information, and then with some nervous glances at each other, everyone split up to make themselves available for the ball. Rose observed both teams as they got ready for their game, and after a nod from the captains of the team, let a shrill blast come from her whistle and jogged off of the field.

The game started off awkwardly, everyone on the field unused to having such a large audience to watch their every stumble and mistake but it only took a few minutes for everyone to feel comfortable and forget that there were people watching on the sidelines.

The ball moved between the two teams quickly, Kai still had a mild panic any time a player suddenly showed up in front of him and in the time that it took him to respond appropriately with his feet, the ball was gone to the opposing team. Lily found herself in the possession of the ball more than anyone, she was the quickest when it came to maneuvering around players.

One moment she’d be faced with someone from her class and then the next she had spun around them with the ball and was running down the field towards the goal. And when the time came to pass the ball to a teammate because she was surrounded...that’s when things went a little wrong.

Lily’s foot would be aiming in one direction, and the ball would end up going in a very different direction. She would’ve called cheating on the fact that someone had to be manipulating the ball if it weren’t for the fact that everyone had handed over their wands to Rose before the game started.

Every time someone intercepted Lily’s pass, she’d let out a frustrated growl before running off after the player to get the ball back.

Much to her surprise, Jeremy didn’t hog the ball to himself, and everyone on the team did a fairly decent job of remaining spread out instead of clustering together running after the ball as was the usual during their practices.

The first goal that Lily’s team made was in the first forty-five minutes of the game. Lily was standing on her end of the field while her teammates spread themselves at as far as they possibly could. The players on Kai’s team had positioned themselves close to her and shuffled in whichever direction her gaze went.

Lily was slowly jogging the ball forwards, looking for anyone she could pass it to and wondering how far she could kick the ball without it flying in the wrong direction. She spotted Jeremy standing a bit farther than the halfway point, completely clear of opposing players. The moment she made eye contact with him, he gave her a determined nod and before the players surrounding Lily could respond, Lily had swung back her foot and sent the football flying in Jeremy’s direction.

Jeremy halted the ball with a bump of his chest before running off down the field with it. Lily broke into a run once she was sure that Jeremy had the ball, racing against her classmates to get to the other end of the field before someone else on the team did.

Lily arrived at the left goal post at the opposite end of the field a minute after Jeremy had made his way there. The other players on their team were surrounded by the opponent and too far from the goal for there to be any decent chance of them scoring. No one had noticed Lily arrive, everyone too focused on Jeremy and the ball to pay attention to her.

Lily tentatively put her hand in the air and gave it a small shake to draw Jeremy’s attention to her. He didn’t hesitate in sending the ball her way the minute he saw her. Lily didn’t have time to prepare herself, one moment she was trying to catch Jeremy’s attention and the next, the football was soaring towards her head and her mind had gone blank.

She didn’t know how she did it, all Lily knew was that she was watching the ball soar towards her and her body of its own accord, launched her into the air, her head made contact with the ball, tilted and sent the ball flying towards the goal behind her. Lily turned, watched the goalie jump into the air to try and catch the ball, saw the ball flying through his outstretched arms and hit the net and stared in shock as her teammates let out a loud cheer.

Only moments later Rose was blowing the whistle announcing the end of the first half of the game. Lily received dozens of claps on the back, her ears full of cheering and hollering. No one was as shocked as she was at the fact that she of all people had made the goal.

However Lily snapped out of it when someone chucked a bottle of water at her face and she suddenly became aware of how thirsty and tired she was. Her legs burned like they had never burned before, she was literally dripping in sweat and there was a cramp in her side that she figured was probably caused by dehydration.

“What’s the strategy for the second half of the game?” someone on her team gasped out from their position on the ground. Lily’s mind was having a difficult time of trying to think of anything that wasn’t water.

“Try to keep them from scoring?” someone offered.

“Excellent idea, let’s stick with that,” Lily agreed. Her adrenaline was pumping, her heart pounding loudly in her ears and even though her thighs were on fire, Lily was ready to get back out on the field and keep playing.

The thought also made her want to cry too, she really wanted a nap.

After a fifteen minute break, everyone was back out on the field again, ready to go for the second half of the match.

Lily didn’t go as hard during the second half of the match as she had on the first. Her teammates, inspired by her goal, had taken up the job of keeping the opposing team from scoring so enthusiastically that no opposing player was making it onto her end of the field.

Lily had turned her back briefly on the game going on in front of her to look back at her goalie, who was standing around looking incredibly bored, and was met with the sight of Jeremy on the ground in front of her and someone on Kai’s team receiving a yellow card from Rose.

Lily jogged over to someone wearing the same colour as her and asked, “What happened here?”

“I think we’ve been doing our job a little too well, Jeremy just got shoved from behind for intercepting another pass,” the girl replied nodding her head in the direction of Jeremy who was scowling up the classmate that had pushed him.

The game continued on without any further kerfuffles. Kai’s team came close to scoring several times, but Lily’s goalie blocked any shot that managed to come her way and Lily went out of her way to stick her foot in front of somebody’s path or to block the ball with her body.

By the time the game ended at the ninety minute mark everyone was dead. Lily’s team had indeed won but everyone was too busy trying not to fall asleep on the ground to be able to enjoy that victory too much.

The crowd that had gathered on the sidelines to watch, made their way back to the castle talking amongst each other about the game and what had happened. Lily didn’t even care if they had played badly, the only people who would realise it were probably the muggle students.

Rose stood in the middle of the field, her whistle around her neck and clipboard in hand, looking around at her students panting on the ground with calmness

“Congratulations to Lily’s team for winning in this sport, you will all receive one point each, making you all tied for first place at the moment. Kai’s team, you unfortunately lost the match, you will be receiving zero points, better luck next time,” Rose said, making marks on her clip board that nobody could see.

“Wash up, you all smell a little funky and I’ll see you all in class where we will be starting on our next sport: rugby,” Rose said. She gave back everyone’s wands before using her own to make the nets and the lines on the Quidditch pitch disappear before finally transfiguring the football back into the Quaffle.

“If you thought this was bad, rugby is going to destroy you,” Rose said with a giggle before heading up the castle, leaving her students staring after her from the ground in horror.

“Your cousin is actually Satan,” Jeremy said to Lily. All he got back in terms of a response was a groan.

* * *

“Honestly kill me, I have to actually tackle people in this godforsaken game,” one of Lily’s classmates said, slamming her head down onto her textbook. Lily was fairly certain her name was Lucinda.

Lily shook herself out of the daydream she was having in which she tackled Jeremy to the ground so hard she broke his nose in the process.

“Think of it as incentive to be really good at the game,” Kai replied optimistically.

“Oh yeah, I just love being threatened with having my internal organs shoved into my spine if I don’t make it to the goal line,” Lucinda replied drily.

There were several grumbles of agreement from the rest of the people in Lily’s class. They had all gathered outside onto the Quidditch Pitch again to practice for their rugby match. It was everyone’s first time playing the game and everyone was a little on edge, terrified of getting a tooth knocked out, or getting hit in some very tender areas near their nether regions.

Rose had seemed far too excited during their class while they briefly went over the rules and objectives of the game along with some terminology to freshen up everyone’s memory.

There was still no safety equipment found on any of them or proper athletic clothing. Rose skipped onto the field, humming merrily as she met the terrified gazes of her students. She had the quanco tucked under her arm, although it was still the Quaffle used during the Quidditch games tucked under one arm.

“How are you all doing on this fine day?” Rose asked with a wide grin. She got silence in response. “Everyone remember how we start to play?”

Everyone around her nodded slowly and spread out on the field in the lines that Rose had redrawn on the ground again. Rose forewent the formality of flipping the coins and letting the winning team and the losing team decide who was going to do went and instead simply threw the ball to Jeremy’s team.

To Lily’s delight, Rose had reassigned the teams and Lily found herself playing as the opponent of Jeremy on the rugby field. It gave her a good excuse to launch herself at him and knock the wind out of him.

Jeremy started off the practice game by kicking the ball forwards ten metres onto Lily’s side of the field. For a moment, everyone was too scared to move towards the ball, afraid somebody would jump on their back and take them down if they made contact with the quanco.

Not Lily.

She paused for a moment before shooting off towards where the ball had landed on the grass. Without stopping, she bent over, picked up the ball and kept running with it, crossing the halfway line and entering Jeremy’s side of the field. Everyone stood around watching her, too shocked to actually be able to stop her.

Lily sprinted and kept sprinting until she crossed the goal line on Jeremy’s side of the field. She touched the quanco down on the ground and then jogged back to Jeremy with it, panting a bit from the sprint she had taken. She shoved the quanco into Jeremy’s chest, forcing him to take a step back as his arms came up to catch the ball.

“Come on now Jeremy, you’re making this easier than it already is,” Lily side as she sauntered over to her side of the team.

* * *

 

The rugby game took place on a Sunday, everyone had split themselves onto either side of the field once again, the colours had been changed up this time, and a larger crowd had joined Rose’s class on the Quidditch pitch. There were more people present than there had been at the football game. Rose had again put on her referee uniform and was waiting around until everyone was ready to begin the game.

Every one of Rose’s students stood bouncing around on the balls of their feet, pumping their arms or stretching their muscles. Someone on Lily’s team was giving an uplifting pep talk, a pleasant surprise from the aggressive encouragement Lily had offered her team during the previous game.

Jeremy was on his side of the team, pumping his fist into the air, the look on Kai’s face growing more and more alarmed by the passing second. The poor boy had gotten stuck with Jeremy instead of Lily as a teammate. He had approached Lily after their practice and asked her to break his arm so that he wouldn’t have to play on the same team as Jeremy.

Lily had called him an idiot and refused.

No one was showing any signs of nervousness like they had during their football game, not one thought was crossing through anyone’s mind on whether or not they would end up looking like a fool throughout the game.

Kai had managed to sneak away from his team, Jeremy still pumping his fist into the air as most of his team ignored him. Kai tapped Lily on the shoulder from where she was stretching out on the grass. She looked up at him and tilted her head questioningly.

“What is it?” she asked as she leaned forward again to grab onto the sole of her shoe and held the position.

“Uh, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Jeremy if I were you,” Kai replied, glancing over at Jeremy warily. “He’s been yelling at everyone to tackle you whenever they get the chance, that trash talk from practice really got his blood pumping.”

Lily sat up and turned her attention to her other foot, her face almost touching her knee. Kai squatted down in order to better hear Lily’s muffled voice.

“It got everyone’s blood pumping, that was the _point_ ,” Lily said. “This game would be boring as hell if everyone wasn’t determined to win, and that’s just what I did.”

“Still, I’d steer clear of him,” Kai said worriedly.

“Oh don’t worry about it,” Lily said with a wave of her hand. She sat up and then jumped to her feet. Lily knew Jeremy, he was all bark and no bite, he’d probably hesitate when it came time to actually tackle her and in that moment, she’d get past him and score. Lily grinned and waved at someone behind Kai’s shoulder. 

“I’m so glad you guys came!” Lily exclaimed as she threw her arms around Delilah and Will.

“Sorry we couldn’t come to your last game,” Will said crossing his arms.

“We heard it was great though so we’re here now,” Delilah said, throwing an arm around Lily’s shoulders and giving her a supportive squeeze.

“Are you looking forward to kicking Jeremy’s ass?” Will asked with a knowing smile on his face. Lily clenched her fists in determination.

“I’m always ready to beat Jeremy at anything,” Lily said with a smirk.

“We’ll be watching on the sidelines, try not to get anything broken,” Delilah said, giving Lily’s shoulders one final squeeze before her and Will headed off to the sidelines to watch the rugby game with the other spectators.

“Your friends seem nice,” Kai finally piped up from his spot where he’d been all but forgotten by everyone around him. Lily started and gave him a guilty smile, she’d completely forgotten to introduce him to her friends.

“Sorry about that, but if we’re conscious by the end of this game, I’ll make sure to introduce you to them,” Lily said apologetically.

“Now go, your team is waiting for you, I’ll see you out on the field,” Lily said. She turned him around by his shoulders and then gave him a light push in the direction of the rest of his team.

“Try not to aim for my sensitive areas if you’re gonna throw yourself at me,” Kai yelled back as he broke into a light jog.

The captain of Lily’s team jogged over to Rose, Jeremy running to join the two as he had been elected as the leader of his team. Lily watched Rose talking to them, holding out her coin, watched the coin flip.

Lily and the rest of the team stood around waiting, rubbing their hands together or on their arms as they attempted to stay warm. Finally the team captain jogged over and informed everyone that they would be doing the starting kick.

“Lily, you can do the kick if you want, we all know how much you love to picture that it’s Jeremy’s head,” the captain said with a grin. Lily clapped him on the shoulder before jogging towards the halfway line to prepare for her kick. Lily waited for everyone on the opposite side of the field to get into position, looked over her shoulder to make sure that her own teammates were in position and ready for the game.

At a nod from her captain, Lily took two steps back from the ball, took in a deep breath, and then in a swift movement, swung her leg with all of the force that she could muster and sent the ball soaring over ten metres into enemy territory.

Immediately someone from Jeremy’s team scooped up the ball and broke out into a sprint towards Lily’s side of the field. Lily’s team responded, everyone rearranging themselves into positions that would trap the player, some of them, including Lily, sprinting right towards the player.

Lily got to the player first and launched herself forward, her shoulder made contact with his stomach and then both of them went flying through the air, the ball flying over Lily’s head as it was forced out of her opponent's arms. They landed with a thud and a groan, Lily was up on her feet in minutes, her eyes immediately locking on whoever had the quanco in possession.

“Sorry,” Lily muttered down at the player before running off to play the game. 

The first forty minutes of the game passed by in a blur for Lily, she remembered throwing herself at a bunch of people, wrestling the ball out of someone’s arms, kicking it across the field, and the moment time stood temporarily still as she was thrown off her feet and then slammed into the ground. The air was knocked out of her, her back was already aching, and her arms seemed to have locked around the ball. And then she had been swarmed by pretty much everyone playing the game and had struggled to pass the ball off to someone who was on her own team. The mass of bodies had immediately lifted off of her.

When halftime finally arrived, Lily was only aware of the fact that her entire body was aching in every single place imaginable. She could barely turn her head from side to side without grimacing at the soreness of her muscles. She swallowed back an entire bottle of water before stretching out her sore muscles.

The second half of the game began with a pile up right on top of Lily, which she considered extremely inconvenient, an understatement considering her vision was dark around the edges. When Lily had laid down to sleep later that day, she honestly wasn’t sure how she had managed to make it through the other half of the game. There was so much yelling, and shoving, and running, and she found herself constantly in need of drinking more water but somehow, her team had managed to pull through and win themselves the game.

As much as Lily hated the fact that she was barely capable of moving the next day because her limbs screamed with pain at the slightest movement, she was just glad that she was the one who had earned the points for her team instead of letting Jeremy win the points for his team. That put her ahead of him on the leaderboard, a fact which made her happy enough to endure the stiffness in her back and her neck.

When Lily walked into her Muggle Studies class, she shot Jeremy a smug look before sauntering over to her seat and sitting down with a grimace. Rose, as always, was chipper and excited for class, as if her students didn’t look like they’d all just been recently mugged.

“Before we begin, I would just like to congratulate Lily’s team for winning the game, everyone on her team will receive one point and move up the leaderboard. I haven’t seen a defeat by such a large difference in points since the Brazil versus Germany game at the FIFA World Cup,” Rose added, a reference which went over the head of everyone in the class, including Lily’s.

“Now I know you’re all sore, but the show must go on, so rest up and exercise over the next few days because we’re going to be taking up hockey ladies and gents, I hope you all know how to skate,” Rose said, and with a flourish, turned around to her blackboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are a lot more characters present in this story than i had originally anticipated so will i remember all of their names is going to be interested. i was going to post last night but i'm posting now because my class got cancelled and i have time to kill.
> 
> also this might turn into a 3 chapter event because i severely underestimated how long they were going to be. also if anything is inaccurate concerning the rules of rugby please let me know i had to google them.


	6. The Sports Unit Part 2

Lily wouldn’t say that she was a great skater, on the contrary, she considered herself a pretty mediocre skater. It was one of the many sports that never quite stuck with her throughout life. She thought it might have been due to the fact that Harry had never learned how to skate as a child and as a result had never really picked it up all that well. Lily had taken after Harry and while she could move on the ice rather awkwardly, she was by no means on the level of a figure skater.

So it came as quite a surprise to everyone to discover how good Lily was at hockey when she often had trouble staying balanced on her feet if a strong wind blew. When it came to simply skating around at her own pace, Lily was wobbly at best, when it came time to play a sport on ice, however, Lily became a total _beast._

She wasn’t good in terms of technical skill, Lily just got extremely aggressive and competitive when it came to playing the sport. Her strategy was to take as many people down as fast as possible in order to get them out of her way.

“Lily you can’t just push Jeremy over to try and get the puck,” Rose yelled exasperatedly after having blown her whistle shrilly for several minutes. Lily had been unable to stop and gone sliding right into Kai’s back where the two of them gripped each other’s arms and wobbled for a few minutes.

Rose had set up a rink on the Black Lake for everyone to practice their skating and hockey skills on. She had set up a boundary that kept the temperature within that boundary below zero to keep the water she had frozen from melting. The school, in general, wasn’t far from having its first snowfall, every few days everyone would wake up to the weather being well below zero only for it to warm up throughout the day.

Outside of the boundary, students wore relatively thin layers of clothing to keep warm, in comparison to those standing inside the boundary. The students in Rose’s class had on several layers of clothing to stay warm, mittens and gloves among them, with the occasional toque by those who were completely intolerant to even the mildest chill

“He’s already on the ground you really should’ve told me this before,” Lily said with a smug grin that Rose simply rolled her eyes at.

“Lily, you know full well that you can’t push people over in order to win, don’t act like we don’t play hockey every winter, you terrify the neighbourhood muggle children,” Rose replied with a stern look. “Don’t let me see you doing that again.”

“Fine,” Lily said with a resigned sigh and a roll of her eyes. “I’ll make sure you’re not looking then,” she added, low enough that only Kai could hear her.

“This game isn’t for playing nice,” Lily said with a huff towards Kai.

“Lily we’re trying to finish this unit with as few concussions as possible, you realise that right? We still want to keep the brain cells that we have, not try and bash them into non-existence,” Kai said, pulling Lily’s dark blue beanie down over her eyes.

Lily let go of Kai to pull the rim of her hat out of her eyes, the sudden movement had her wobbling and before she could get a bearing on her surroundings, Lily found herself slipping backwards and landing on the ice hard. Jeremy skated by giggling at Lily sprawled on the floor, making sure to send some snow her way as he passed by.

Rose spent more time on the hockey unit than she had on the previous units, she had assumed, correctly, that her students wouldn’t be all that familiar with hockey. Many of them knew how to skate, it was just not a pastime that they participated in often, as Rose had been told in class. Skating leisurely was one thing, skating while trying to keep track of more than just staying balanced was quite another.

Much time had been spent with everyone learning how to use their hockey sticks to aim the puck in the right direction. As was the case when playing football, being over enthusiastic with where you were hitting your object of interest usually sent it flying in the wrong direction completely.

For once Rose had invested in at least one piece of safety equipment for the game: helmets. The helmets were mostly to keep everyone safe from Lily’s elbows.

Rose had used up another class of theirs by letting everyone practice skating around and running a few simple drills that she had looked up in a musty old textbook from the library. She had then put in a request with the librarian to perhaps get books that were written in the current century on muggle sports as opposed to the last. She had announced at their last class that she would give them another week to practice as much as possible before they had their official game and said goodbye to the unit.

Everyone’s attention was dragged to Rose as she let out a shrill blow on her whistle. “There’s only a few minutes before class ends, I suggest you all change into your regular shoes and head back to the castle,” Rose called out.

“And remember to practice as much as possible, you only have a week left before you play off against each other, this little area will be here until the unit is over so feel free to come down here whenever you want for however long you want,” Rose said, raising her voice to be heard over the chattering of the students as they all wobbled towards the shore holding onto each other, their minds immediately drifting to other topics to talk about.

"So how do you feel about the upcoming game for hockey," Kai asked as he skated backward away from Lily. Lily scowled at his showing off as she slowly inched her way towards the shore of the lake.

"I'm just hoping to stay upright throughout most of it if I'm being honest with you," Lily replied distractedly, her muscles tensed in case she slipped and fell.

"I think everyone else is hoping the same thing, but I have a feeling for different reasons," Kai said, trying to smother his laughter as Lily collapsed onto the hard ground once she had gotten off the ice.

“I’m sure the game will be fine, I mean, we’re all pretty competitive but I don’t think it’ll be to the point where it’ll become a problem,” Lily said with a shrug of her shoulders, Kai simply raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

* * *

 

“OH COME ON ROSE I DIDN’T TRIP HIM AT ALL, HE FELL COMPLETELY ON HIS OWN!” Lily yelled after her cousin as Rose skated away, whistle still in between her lips. Lily’s class was approaching their end of their official hockey game, the student body of Hogwarts had slowly built up on the sidelines to come watch everyone play.

Or, more accurately, to come watch Lily mow everyone down during the game. Word had spread throughout the castle of Lily’s tendency to get increasingly aggressive the longer she stayed on the ice.

“Lily this is the fifth person you’ve pushed over, you keep this up and I’m going to start deducting marks,” Rose responded with a stern look. This was enough to shut Lily up as everyone on her team turned to glare at her.

“Okay, so I guess I’ll just stay out of the way from now on,” Lily said putting her hands up in surrender.

“Good call,” Kai said as he skated buy her and gave a hard knock to her helmet.

The game ended with Lily’s team losing miserably and skating off the ice in dejection. Nobody was really expecting any great skill when it came to hockey but the point gap between the two teams had been downright embarrassing.

“Come on guys, that was an … okay game, don’t let it get you down we still have a few more sports to make it through,” Rose said, in her attempt to give a rousing speech that was only acknowledged with a few grunts from the students around her as everyone began untying their skates and pulling them off along with one or two layers of clothing.

The crowd that had gathered for the game had dispersed leaving only a few people standing around chatting.

The class was about to disperse and slowly make their way up to the castle to grab some food before everyone got to work on their other schoolwork when their attention was demanded by Rose once again.

“Unfortunately, we’re going to have our practice time cut down in order to be able to fit in a few more of the sports I mentioned. If we don’t, we’ll only be stuck with enough time to do one more sport before moving onto the next unit. I’ve decided to cut out rowing and tennis as they would take too much time, so we’ll only stick with doing basketball and swimming and end the unit there,” Rose said, raising her voice at the end as everyone grumbled in disappointment.

“This is good news for you however, because this means that there is less you have to know for the test,” she added with a grin which brought smiles from some students and fist pumps in the air from others.

When everyone showed up for their class practice for basketball, it seemed that everyone in the class had the rules memorized and was already pretty good with the ball. Nobody was more surprised than Rose -who had left the class on their own momentarily to ensure that the storage room on the Quidditch Pitch was properly locked- to find her students dribbling the ball and playing an easy game of basketball in their own teams.

“How are you all so good?” Rose asked, blinking at them in bewilderment.

“You said we were gonna have less practices so we all just did it on our own,” Jeremy said as he aimed at one of the basketball hoops Rose had brought and completely missed, a couple of people snickering at how wide the shot went.

“Wow, you’re all doing really great, this might be the only practice we really need, our next meet up can just be the game,” Rose said with excitement.

“Does that mean that we can have another sport to do,” Lily asked eagerly from where she was sitting on a basketball on the sidelines. She gave a hard shoved at Kai’s leg as he attempted to kick the ball out from underneath.

“Unfortunately, an extra session or two won’t be enough to do another sport, but if you all want, at the end of the year as a class bonding trip, we can all go rock climbing in the muggle world,” Rose said, which was greeted with several sounds of agreement from quite a few people that were standing around. Others looked uncertain and were probably mumbling something about having to ask for permission.

With a few sharp blasts to her whistle, Rose got the official practice going. For one reason or another, the practice went much smoother and much more calmly than any of the previous practices, even Lily was behaving herself. Maybe it had something to do with the fact this was one of the last sports everyone was going to do, maybe everyone was already full of nostalgia for the past, as if the sports unit had already ended.

No one was by any means on the level of a professional, or even gifted, but everyone was good enough to spread themselves out and pass the ball among each other to get the shot. With each passing game, the passes got quicker, the dribbling got faster as everyone got used to having the ball in their hand and multitasking at the same time.

Rose stepped in a few times and helped a few students out with their shooting, fixing their arm form, the position of their hands on the balls and saw immediate improvement in accuracy from those who received her help.

It was one of the few things that Rose did while she was there, everyone knew the rules so well that Rose never had to step in to stop someone, or blow her whistle excessively because Lily kept toeing the line between accidental and a straight foul.

And Rose was kind of missing the chaos if she was being entirely honest with herself.

There was just something about the yelling and the frustration and the shoving that kept things lively and interesting, she didn’t realize how much she was looking forward to it until everyone had calmed down.

Rose called it a night when the sun had almost disappeared on the horizon and the temperature had dropped a few degrees.

Practice ended as quietly as it started, everyone heading up to the class in pairs or groups, laughing and talking. She stayed behind to put away the basketball hoops so that they wouldn’t be in the way should anyone have Quidditch practice.

Lily was the only one who had stayed behind, hands in the pockets of her pants, humming a song that Rose hadn’t heard before.

“Did you need anything Lils?” Rose asked as she shrugged on her jacket and turned towards the castle. Lily immediately fell into step with her as the two of them slowly made their way down the path away from the Pitch.

“Nah, I just wanted to check in with you,” Lily said with a friendly nudge of Rose’s shoulder.

“Check in for what?” Rose asked in surprise.

“How’s teaching going? Are you overwhelmed? Are you still nervous?” Lily inquired. She took her hands out of her pocket and rubbed them together quickly to try and warm them up.

Rose thought about it for a moment before giving a reply.

“I’m not nervous anymore no, we’ve spent weeks together so I know everyone now,” Rose said and then bit her lip thoughtfully. “But maybe I’ll still be nervous with the new batch of first years every year … I don’t know I’ve just gotten so used to teaching and marking, I really thought it was going to take some more time to adjust.”

“Hey, if it means anything,” Lily said, throwing an arm around Rose and squeezing her shoulders painfully, “I think you make a great prof.”

Rose grimaced in pain as Lily’s hold tightened even more. “Thanks, that means a lot, can you stop trying to shatter my shoulders now please.”

“Oh sorry,” Lily said letting go immediately. Rose staggered, trying to gain her balance as Lily stepped away.

“Now that I know what kind of strength you have in those arms, at least we can be certain who’s going to come in first for swimming,” Rose said massaging the back of her neck.

“Well of course, who else is going to come in first,” Lily said with a scoff and a flip of her hair.

* * *

 

The most surprising player during the basketball game wasn’t Lily, it wasn’t even Jeremy, although that didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, it was Kai of all people. No one was really sure how he managed to hide all of his skills during their practice, but come the day of the game and the shrill sound of Rose’s whistle, and the boy was a blur that everyone could barely keep track of.

Lily, who had been quite confident that her team was going to win, started second guessing herself when fifteen minutes into the game, Kai had already brought the points for his team up to sixteen while also managing to block almost every shot the players from Lily’s team made.

He dribbled and zipped and slid around everyone with no hesitation in his movements. If Lily popped up out of Kai’s left side, he kept the ball near his body and spun, his back to Lily and was past her before she could even think of how to block him. No one knew how to stop him, mostly because no one had the skill, even Lily’s insane competitiveness wasn’t enough to make her good at the game.

Even the spectators that had come down weren’t sure what to make of Kai, it was one thing to impress the pureblooded students that weren’t exposed to muggle things, but it said something when even the muggleborn and halfblood students were impressed. By the time that their halfway mark came around, Lily was winded and ready to drop to the ground exhausted. Her teammates were in similar states in various spots across the court with their eyes closed.

And Kai was calmly eating a banana as if he hadn’t been absolutely destroying everyone for a good hour.

Once Lily had managed to get her breath back and felt stable enough on her legs to not fall over, she confronted Kai about his talent in typical Lily fashion,

“Excuse me, but where in the hell did you get this sudden skill from? How are you so good at this game, I mean I’m thrilled, don’t get me wrong but also, how dare you?” Lily demanded all in one breath.

“I play with my brothers,” Kai said, he took the towel hanging around his neck and quickly dried the sweat from his hair,

“How did you guys know about basketball, you don’t even have anyone muggle in your family, you live in a wizarding neighbourhood for Merlin’s sake!” Lily exclaimed, hands flying through the air to further emphasize her point. Kai ducked as one of her hands came dangerously close to hitting him in the face.

“We didn’t, we made up our own game, we had this big trash can and a ball and we were like, hey, let’s try throwing the ball in there and … well… basketball happened I guess,” he said with a shrug. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know it already existed or what it was called before this class.”

Lily glared, Kai simply blinked back at her cluelessly. For several minutes. He ruffled the back of his head and finally broke eye contact with Lily, looking down at the ground in discomfort. Lily took a step closer to Kai and he leaned away from her as she did.

“Would you mind teaching me your ways some time?” Lily asked.

“Sure thing, come by whenever you want,” Kai said, finally breaking out into a relieved grin.

“In the meantime, try not to destroy my team out there,” Lily said, with a slap to his shoulder that was hard enough to send Kai stumbling forward.

“I’ll make sure to let you guys score on my team a few times,” Kai reassured Lily with a wink before walking away.

Lily clapped her hands loudly to get the attention of the rest of her teammates, “Alright team, let’s get out there and try not to bring shame upon ourselves.”

And Kai did indeed let Lily’s team score on his a few times, although he was fooling no one into thinking that Lily’s team had just gotten past him, maybe his teammates, but definitely not past him. No one believed his excuses of “she just moved so fast” or “I’m not tall enough to block that shot.” But no one was bothered enough to point out the fact that he was letting in the shots on purpose. Mostly because anyone who dared to breathe in a manner that suggested they were going to snitch got the nastiest stink eye from Lily and decided to keep their mouth shut.

The game ended as everyone had expected from the start: Kai’s team won with enough of a point difference that Lily’s team would have had no way of beating. It was enough that Kai’s team clearly came out as superior in skill, but small enough that it seemed as if Lily’s team made a good effort at keeping up.

And making it seem as if Lily’s team wasn’t as abysmal at basketball as they really were.

Rose’s speech was supportive as always, informing everyone of who would be receiving points and who would not even though everyone knew how the system worked by this point and reminded them all to prepare for their last event.

Swimming was perhaps the easiest sport that everyone was guaranteed to be good at. After all, who hadn’t held swimming races with their friend whenever they found themselves at the beach or at a lake or a swimming pool. It was natural to be a bit competitive, and as everyone knew how to swim, it would only be a matter of practicing to speed up your time.

“And on a final note, our swimming competition will be held in the Prefect’s bathroom, while the Black Lake is a readily available source of water for our races to be held, there are also a lot of other creatures that inhabit the lake as well, most of them unpleasant. To avoid any unpleasant circumstances we will be borrowing the Prefect baths, please meet outside of our class so that I may lead you there. If you show up at the shore of the lake half nude, it will be embarrassing as well as extremely cold for you,” Rose said to several snickers from some of the students standing around her.

“Other than that, I’ll see you next time, have a good rest and good luck with the rest of your classes,” she said as everyone headed off to the castle together and left her behind to clean up the equipment.

The last thing Lily heard as she made her way back to Hogwarts, chatting with Kai, was Rose giving a very exacerbated response to Jeremy that went,

“No Jeremy, helping me put away the equipment will not earn you any extra points, that’s not how this works.”

* * *

 

The day of the swimming competition came a lot sooner than everyone had anticipated. Rose was surprised to find many of her students grumbling in disappointment that their sports unit was ending especially since so many of them had been reluctant to participate when she had originally proposed the idea.

The tubs in the Prefect bathrooms had been enlarged to accommodate for the swimming competition which meant that unfortunately there was no extra room for spectators. They were large enough that they were approximately the size of an actual pool. A fact that put quite a few of Rose’s students at ease when they heard. She noticed a decrease in tense shoulders and a crossing of arms.

“If I can have all of your attentions please,” Rose said waving her arm in the air. Collectively her students turned to face her, Lily almost elbowing at least three people in the face as she turned to face Rose as she attempted to force her hair into a swimmer’s cap. Kai grabbed Lily’s elbow to steady her as she almost fell into the pool.

“There will be two portions, first we will do the individual races and then we’ll do the relay race,” Rose said. “The first 5 with the fastest times will receive points in the individual races, and the team that hits first place will receive points in the relay race.”

Rose pointed along the entire length of the lane and said, “Every individual will swim to the end of the lane and back to the start once, in the individual race this will mean you are done, in the relay race, once you touch the starting wall, this will be the signal for your next teammate to start swimming. We’ll be going in alphabetical order to keeps things simple.”

Those who knew they were at the start of the attendance list after years of being called on first remained standing while those who were used to being in the middle and last found themselves a seat by the walls to watch. Rose had her stopwatch and wand at the ready and once everyone was good to go, let out a loud bang of smoke from her wand to get everyone going.

The races started off calmly enough with people slowly rotating through their turns but it didn’t take long for the tension to rise and the yelling to start. Soon everyone was yelling from the edge of the pool, cheering for their friends, or in the case of Lily, screaming at Kai to “slow the hell down I gotta win.”

Lily herself had managed to force all of her hair into the small swimmers cap that she had pulled from who knew where and was more than pumped for her turn. She stood from the edge of the pool waiting for the batch of competitors before her to go, rubbing her hands together like an evil villain.

Kai had just finished his race and approached Lily with a towel around his neck, his wet hair spiking up in every direction.

“Lily, you look like you have a tumour growing out of your head,” Kai said trying not to laugh when Lily turned her head, which was now twice as big than it usually was.

“I will have you know, this is what professionals wear,” Lily said with a sniff. Having her hair tied up so tightly was starting to give her a headache and put a strain on her head but she wasn’t about to admit that now.

“There’s a giant …. I don’t even know what to call this, a lump?” Kai said, poking at her swim cap with a finger that Lily slapped away. “It’ll probably slow you down even more than just having your hair hanging loose the entire time.”

“It’s okay, I’m almost done anyways,” Lily said dismissively. She jumped at the bang from Rose’s wand and watched as the group before her hit the water and continued swimming. She couldn’t stop her foot from tapping impatiently on the floor and her shoulders from tensing in anticipation. Lily didn’t know what those butterflies in her stomach were but they better not have been anxiety at her turn to swim.

For once, Lily couldn’t just rely on knowing more about muggles than her magical counterparts because everyone knew how to swim, she wasn’t anymore prepared for the race than anyone else was this time. She was just hoping she would be as good at this part as she was at all of the other parts.

“Lily … Lily,” Kai said snapping his fingers in front of her face. She shook her head and returned back to reality, her classmates in the water were almost back at the starting wall.

“Hmm?” she said, turning to Kai with a dazed look on her face.

“Are you nervous about the race?” Kai asked incredulously.

“Of course not,” Lily scoffed, waving a hand to dismiss Kai’s ridiculous idea.

“Yes you are!” he exclaimed and jumped back to avoid Lily’s fist. “You’re nervous about the race because now there’s no guarantee that you’ll be the best.”

Lily couldn’t believe the sounds coming out of Kai’s mouth, he was actually giggling in amusement.

“Oh shut up, we’ll see who’ll be giggling when I beat your time,” Lily said, jabbing him in the chest hard enough to bruise. And before she could retaliate she walked off and took her place at the edge of the pool. Rose was finishing up recording the times from the last group. Once done, she called out another list of names, Lily’s among them and everyone arranged themselves in order.

Lily’s anxiety built and built as she waited for Rose’s wand to let out a bang letting her know that she could start. Her legs tensed and tensed as the seconds ticked by and just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore and was going to yell at Rose, Rose’s wand went off. Lily dove off the edge on instinct without a second thought. One moment she was in the air with the surface of the water heading towards her and the next, she hit the water and was submerged within seconds. Lily didn’t have time to check whether she was in the lead or not, she was too busy moving her arms and legs and making sure that she was remembering to take a breath to keep going. The only thing that broke her concentration was the loud cheering and yelling whenever she would break the surface to take a large gulp of air.

She hit the wall and quickly turned herself around underwater and headed off back for the other end of the pool again. Lily had never swam so hard or so quickly before, her muscles were beginning to burn from the amount of effort she was trying to squeeze out of them. And then the race was over, her hand touched the starting wall and she could bring her head out of the water to suck in air.

Lily took a moment to catch her breath before hauling herself out of the pool and grabbed the towel that Kai was holding out to her gratefully.

“I think I just beat your score,” Lily said, attempting to smirk as she shivered and quickly wiped herself dry with the towel in her hands. Kai’s eyebrows rose so high they were in danger of disappearing into his hairline.

“Hold your horses there good sir, let’s just wait until the very end before we start getting cocky okay,” Kai said, giving Lily a hard pat to the back.

With her turn now over, Lily found that she didn’t really pay attention to anyone else’s turn or how fast time was passing, her turn was over and there was nothing for her to be anxious about.

At least until the relay race started.

Once the individual races had ended, Rose blew her whistle and once she had everyone’s attention began to read off sets of names of the teams for the relay races. Much to Lily’s displeasure, she was placed on the same team as Kai, and to her even bigger displeasure, Jeremy was placed on her team as well.

“Heh heh heh,” Kai said, hands stuck in the pockets of his swim trunks as he strolled over to Lily who stuck her tongue out at him. “Not feeling so smug now are you.”

“I was really hoping I would get the chance to kick your butt,” Lily said in response.

“And now you have to try your hardest because all of our points depend on it,” Kai said, still grinning but now with an added shoulder shrugging. Lily acted as if she couldn’t see him standing next to her doing his ridiculous shoulder wiggling.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lily said with a friendly punch to the arm. “At least I have you as a buffer for Jeremy.”

Speaking of Jeremy …

“Alright team, let’s make sure to try our hardest so that we can win,” he said clapping his hands. Lily couldn’t help the eyeroll that she gave him. It wasn’t even a conscious response, it was just her normal response to literally anything that came out of Jeremy’s mouth.

It was decided that Kai would go first, Lily would go second, and Jeremy would go last. There was a lot of shuffling and rock paper scissors as everyone decided who was going to go when. Rose waited patiently the entire time until everyone was set up in the orders that they wanted to swim.

“Everyone ready?” Rose asked, looking up and down the row of students, all of whom had their eyebrows furrowed in concentration, staring at the water as if they could make the water help them swim faster. Once Rose was sure that everyone was ready, she brought the whistle to her lips, her stop watch at the ready and gave one sharp blast.

There was a loud splash as bodies hit the water and then everyone was off swimming as if their lives depended on it. Rose’s eyes were darting between each row of students, keeping track of who was in the lead, and Lily’s eyes were focused on Kai as he swam away from her.

When Kai had touched the other side of the pool and was on his way back, Lily bent over and got into position for her own turn. Her cap was seriously beginning to give her a headache at this point and she was itching to get it off of her head and let her mane of hair loose. With each second that passed, the muscles in her legs, shoulders, and arms tensed for the moment when she would spring from her position into the water.

The second Kai’s hand touched the wall on her side again, Lily threw herself forward, arms outstretched and sucked in a breath just before she hit the water. It was the same feeling that she experienced during her individual race, except there was the pressure from her teammates to do well riding on this too.

She wanted to know how well she was measuring up against her classmates but she couldn’t lose focus and slow down enough to figure it out. Just like the individual race, her turn was over before she knew it. Once Lily touched the wall, Jeremy was off to finish off the turn. Lily lifted herself out of the water, snatched the towel out of Kai’s hands without a word and watched as Jeremy pulled into the first spot and then fell back into second place over and over again.

“Come on Jeremy, pull through,” Lily muttered under her breath.

“Do my ears deceive me, Lily Potter actually rooting for Jeremy?” Kai said jokingly. If looks could melt the flesh off your bones, Lily’s glare would have left Kai for dead.

Lily really got into it in the last few seconds of the competition, jumping up and down, twisting the towel in her hands as she yelled, “HAUL ASS JEREMY FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE HAUL. ASS.” Her swim cap and her headache were completely forgotten, the back of her head bobbing up and down as Lily jumped.

Unfortunately for Lily, Jeremy did not “haul ass” in a way that allowed them to snag first place. Instead they had to settle for second, which wasn’t a bad spot to be in, but it also didn’t get them any points..

As a sign of good sportsmanship, Lily refrained from trying to drown Jeremy. Instead, she settled for an aggressive slap to his arm and the fakest smile that anyone had ever seen. Although by the way that Lily was clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth, it looked as if she was getting ready to eat Jeremy instead.

While Lily was distracted with trying to be nice, Kai had slipped his finger under her swim cap and with one swift motion had pulled it off. As if on cue, Lily’s hair elastics snapped and her hair burst away from her scalp, slapping Kai in the eyes as it went. Lily was in the midst of making sure Kai could still see when Rose demanded everyone’s attention for her usual speech.

“Well done today everyone, I hope you all enjoyed our sports unit, please do leave me some feedback so I know what to improve on for the students that will be coming after you next year. Feel free to slide me a piece of parchment whenever you want, all anonymous of course. Make sure you all dry off properly, I’d hate for you to catch something,” Rose said, clutching her clipboard to her chest. Her hair had gotten considerably bigger throughout the entire competition. It now looked as if she had two heads instead of one, her giant hair clip was doing everything in its power to hold Rose’s hair back. Lily was ready to hit the floor should the hair clip snap and go flying across the room.

While Rose took out her wand and transformed the pools back to their ridiculously large bath shapes that the Prefects normally used, her students blasted themselves with drying spells and tugged on their robes. When Rose was done her own clean up, she fully expected to be alone in the Prefect’s bathroom.

Unfortunately, she found that her entire class was still very much present and waiting to hear who had won.

“Rose, aren’t you going to tell us who got the most points,” Lily whined once she couldn’t take the suspense anymore.

But Rose simply gave everyone a mischievous smile, held her clipboard closer to her chest and tightened her grip on it.

“Oh I’m not telling you anything today, I’ll save the results for next class,” Rose said and Lily was willing to bet money that she was just seconds away from full on cackling.

“But Rose, our next class is after winter holidays,” Lily said, planting her hands on her hips.

“I know, so it should give you plenty of time to think about and gossip about who got how many points,” Rose said, walking towards the door as quickly as possible. “Although if you were all paying attention, it shouldn’t be all that hard to figure out. Happy holidays.”

And with that, Rose was out the door before anyone in the class could think to jump her and yank her clipboard out of her arms. Instead everyone turned to Lily, as if she could demand any answers from Rose or read Rose’s mind.

“I don’t know if its been mentioned, but your cousin is actually Satan,” Kai said to Lily.

Lily shrugged her shoulders and said,

“Anyone up to see Madam Pomfrey about their sudden spike in anxiety?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ending scene was inspired by exam season and waiting for your profs to put up your exam marks.


	7. The Fly On the Wall Experiment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you all forgive me if this isn't the most well written piece of work out there i think i've become quite rusty since I go for such long periods without writing

Arthur Weasley had a particular fondness for rubber ducks. Lily Potter had a particular fondness for duct tape.

It was Lily’s go to object when it came to fixing problems. People’s protests that it was messy and excessive in comparison to magic fell on deaf ears. Mostly because the sound that duct tape makes when you pull a strip off the roll was really loud.

But as was the usual, where there was a muggle object, and Lily Potter, there was the ability to take things too far.

That was how the entire Gryffindor Common Room found themselves participating in a Fly On the Wall challenge. Lily had come across the concept during the summer when she had been talking to one of the muggle neighbours on her street. She’d listened with rapt attention as her friend had gone on and on about the various events that had happened at her school throughout the year.

The basic idea of Fly on the Wall, as it had been explained to Lily, was for people to split up into groups of four or five, and tape one member of the team to the wall with duct tape. Whoever managed to keep their human taped to the wall for the longest period of time, won.

This was how Rose found the Gryffindor Common Room when she was summoned by McGonagall one evening. There were more students stuck to the walls of the Gryffindor Common Room than the original founders had probably anticipated. Of course, the most enthusiastic group out of everyone’s present was Lily herself.

McGonagall had her back to the portrait hole when Rose stepped through, hands clasped behind her as she surveyed the room around her.

“Miss Weasley, would you care to explain what exactly is going in this common room?” McGonagall asked as she turned to Rose. Although Rose was a member of the staff and no longer a student at Hogwarts, that didn’t stop her from feeling as if she was about to receive the scolding of her life, followed by a detention.

“Er … well, it seems that the students are using duct tape to stick each other to the wall,” Rose said, eyebrows furrowing with uncertainty. She looked around the room to make sure that that was in fact what was happening.

“The question is, why, Miss Weasley?” McGonagall asked. Rose could feel her body temperature rising with each question, as if she was writing a quiz that she had none of the answers to.

“I … um … to be quite honest with you, I’m not entirely sure,” Rose replied after a moment of silence. There wasn’t really any good reason to stick people to a wall, then again, there wasn’t a good reason to build a grappling hook and go swinging outside of her window in the middle of the night but that hadn’t stopped Lily either.

“Is this duct tape harmful to the students?”

“Other than being really effective as a hair remover, I don’t think anyone will come to much harm,” Rose said just as one particularly small First Year dropped to the ground with a piercing shriek. “I’ll tell Lily to put a stop to this right away Professor McGonagall, I’m so sorry.”

McGonagall turned to Rose with a sigh and a resigned look on her face. “Don’t worry Miss Weasley, no one will cause my blood pressure to spike dangerously as much as your uncle George and Fred did during their time at Hogwarts.”

McGonagall walked past Rose, pushed the portrait hole open and paused just before she exited the common room. She turned back to Rose, leaned in, and said quietly, “Just make sure people don’t end up in the Hospital Wing with an injury that’s _too_  serious.”

And so Rose was left to find an open seat from which to watch the spectacle as everyone continued taping each other to the common room walls. She took her spot next to a student who had timer counting down in the air in front of them.

“Oh hello Miss Weasley,” the student said turning to her with a bright smile. Rose smiled back in response. “Are you excited for our Fly On the Wall competition?”

“I’m always happy to clean up after Lily’s disasters,” Rose deadpanned. She looked around the room where various students had taken the position of step stool for their friends. All of them had various looks of pain on their faces as their friends shifted from foot to foot while they were taped to the wall.

“Why don’t they just use chairs, or tables?” Rose asked the student sitting next to her. The student immediately to Rose’s left collapsed on the floor, unable to take being stood on anymore. Their friend who was in the middle of being taped gave a yell as their body gave a jerk. Only half of their body had been stuck to the wall, the other half was dangling, all of their weight being left on whatever limbs were currently stuck to the wall.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” they shrieked, eyes closing shut to tolerate the pain they were no doubt in. Their friends immediately jumped to taping as fast as they possibly could to aid their friend. One brave soul took up the position as the new step stool as the previous rolled out of the way with a groan.

“The rule is that you’re not allowed to use any other objects except your team members, your tape, and your wit to get the person stuck to the wall,” the student replied with a smile.

Rose focused on them until the shrieking had stopped and then let her eyes wander around the room searching for Lily. Her ears were searching for the usual yelling that accompanied whatever muggle event Lily was involved in but Lily’s distinctive hair-raising shriek was nowhere to be heard. When Rose finally found Lily in the corner of the room, she understood why.

Lily, being the good sport that she was had taped shut the mouth of her rival and sworn enemy, Jeremy. Although why Jeremy was even on the same team as Lily was a mystery to begin with. Kai had been the chosen candidate as their fly on the wall, a position he took quite seriously as Rose judged from the expression on his face. His face was tilted upward, the corners of his mouth tugging down as he looked up towards the ceiling in despair.

Jeremy was of course being of no help at all and stood to the side with his arms crossed petulantly, his eyebrows lowered and scrunched together in irritation. Rose made her way over to them quickly, ducking under and around the various outstretched arms as they ripped up more rolls of tape.

Rose tapped Lily on the shoulder once she was close enough and motioned with her head for her cousin to come speak with her for a moment. Lily gave a sigh of irritation, tossed the roll of duct tape to Jeremy, gave him a threatening look and told him to keep taping.

“What?” Lily asked, her voice rough with her irritation.

“Is Kai alright, why is he making his face like that?” Rose asked, looking over Lily’s head, the boy looked as if he was ready to burst into tears.

“Oh that, he’s just acting like he’s being sacrificed as a martyr, or maybe he said crucified,” Lily muttered, pursing her lips and looking up towards the ceiling, “whatever that means.”

“As long as he’s not seriously hurt,” Rose said with a nod. “And why is Jeremy’s mouth taped shut? Why is he on your team in the first place, you don’t even like him?”

“We needed one more person to be a qualified team and I didn’t have time to find someone else. As for why his mouth is shut, he was breathing too loudly it was getting on my nerves,” Lily replied with a shrug, she turned around to make sure that Jeremy was doing as she had silently commanded him too. “Are we done here, Rose?”

“Just how long do you plan on this little competition going on for?” Rose asked.

“Oh not long, the time’s almost up for gluing our team member’s to the wall and then we just have to wait until only one person is left sticking to the wall,” Lily said, and before Rose could say anything else, she flounced off to Kai and snatched the tape out of Jeremy’s hand.

Rose went back and took her seat next to the student keeping time. There was less than a minute left on the clock. When the time eventually reached zero, a loud blare followed the end of the countdown. Everyone involved in the competition immediately stopped what they were doing and stepped back. Students were taped to the walls with varying levels of success. Some of them appeared ready to drop within a few seconds (which they did), and others looked as if an Unsticking Charm was going to be the only thing capable of getting them off of the wall.

Anyone who wasn’t glued to the wall had taken a seat on various flat surfaces and the floor and waited silently and patiently for students to start dropping to the ground. Not a peep was heard from everyone watching as the time passed. Rose was willing to bet that never in her life had she ever seen Gryffindor Common Room so quiet with so many people in it.

As time passed by people began to fall off of the walls, some with a quiet thump, others with a loud and painful sounding thud, and a few started hollering as they fell.

Ten minutes had come and gone and Rose was fairly certain that Lily was going to win at yet another muggle competition, as she always did, when Kai’s tape suddenly gave away and he fell in a crumpled heap on the ground. He gave a groan and slowly got to his feet, shaking his hair out of his eyes, careful to keep his arms and legs separated lest the tape on each limb get stuck to each other.

Rose never got to stick around until the very end of the competition to find out who won, because once Kai had dropped to the floor, Lily had immediately turned to Jeremy, and with a strong swing of her arm, sent the roll of tape flying at Jeremy’s head. The roll of tape landed on its mark hard and sent Jeremy tumbling to the ground.

“L-L-Lily, control yourself!” Rose sputtered indignantly as she rushed to Jeremy’s side and helped the poor boy to his feet. Rose helped Jeremy walk towards the portrait hole as she led the way to the Hospital Wing so that Madam Pomfrey could take a look at his head, Lily giving her the stink eye the entire way.

“Lily you better hope Jeremy doesn’t have a concussion,” Rose said threateningly, narrowing her own eyes at her younger cousin as she helped Jeremy through the portrait hole and it swung shut behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this more as a collection of short stories/one-shots about Lily throughout her year at Hogwarts and less like an actual novel


End file.
